by Andy Remic
He walked, picking his way through the remains of the trees, their branches reaching out to him, begging him. He saw a sprawled corpse nearby, and it was Bainbridge; for a moment it appeared the large Tommy had been carved from wood, from black deadwood, but as Jones moved closer, he gave a humourless laugh. He knelt and touched the Tommy, the corpse without eyes.
The body was hard, bark-covered, a fallen tree trunk which somehow resembled his friend.
He heard a sound. A whisper of cloth. And looked up.
They were there. Three of these . . . walriders. They loomed over Jones and stared down at him, muzzles drooling, glittering eyes fixed on him.
Jones stood, and lifted his rifle, licking his lips.
They grinned at him.
“We meet again, little man.”
“You do not frighten me.”
“We should. We hunt you through dreams and through reality. We want your eyes.”
“Why would you want my eyes?”
“You have seen things we also want to see.”
Jones lifted his rifle and fired, the bullet screaming on a discharge of ignition. It entered the middle walrider’s eye, exiting from the back of its skull on a shower of bone. The creature rocked back but then dropped, claws gouging the earth. It snarled, and leapt at Jones, the other two also leaping forward, one to either side. Jones’s rifle came up, and he leant back, wedging the stock of the rifle into the mud. The walrider literally impaled itself, charging onto his bayonet. Blood showered from its muzzle, spraying Jones, who squatted, transfixed, as this creature pushed itself slowly up his blade with squelching sounds, the wound widening, then further, up the muzzle of his rifle, the hole in its chest getting bigger, and bigger . . .
They stopped, locked. The other walriders halted, claws flexing in mud. The walrider on Jones’s bayonet grinned at him, at his blood-spattered countenance, its muzzle scant inches from his face.
“You can taste me now.”
Jones gritted his teeth, and said nothing.
“You have drank down my blood. We are part of one another.”
“Horse shit.”
“You think you have won, little soldier?” it snarled on fetid, poisonous breath worse than any Hun gas attack. “This is simply the beginning . . .”
“Jones!”
Jones shuddered, recoiling from the terrifying image, the horrifying experience, and then he was falling, and with a creak of branches, claws came up, jerking, and twig fingers reached for him, grasped at him . . .
“Jones!”
He opened his eyes. Bainbridge was shaking his shoulder and he almost screamed, images flickering, but managed to clamp his mouth shut, grinding his teeth, banishing visions of a haunted No Man’s Land from his skull.
“They hunt me,” he whispered.
“What’s that, lad?”
“Nothing,” croaked Jones, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “What’s up, Sergeant?”
Bainbridge’s smile was a flash of teeth in the gloom.
“Load your rifle, soldier. The command has come through to advance on the Hun and finish this thing once and for all.”
The men assembled in the trench under a downpour of rain. It had been raining all night, and the heavily bombarded ground of No Man’s Land was a treacherous mire.
“Hit them hard!” Bainbridge was shouting, in his rousing speech to build morale, but Jones ignored his words, looked away from the anger and hate in the sergeant’s face. Once, they had been friends. Once, they had been brothers. Now that was slipping away. Bainbridge had changed, and Jones was loath to admit that his friend had become a demon.
Where has his humanity gone?
His compassion?
Ha.
Pissed away in shell holes, that’s where.
Whistles wept from amidst the driving rain. Men scrambled forward, up and over to glory beyond.
Webb was in front of Jones, his back straight, head held high, SMLE clasped in clammy hands as they sank ankle-deep in mud and headed towards the distant enemy lines, gloomy through the dark and the smoke.
Guns echoed. The men heaved through mud, a great line of infantry sweeping in from left and right under the cover of heavy machine gun fire; the considerable airborne and artillery bombardments of the last twenty days had destroyed much of the opposing lines, or so they’d been told, but there was still resistance, including chipped, battered concrete pillboxes housing terrible machines of death.
Bullets slapped through the mud to Jones’s right, cutting down a line of men in a shower of screams and blood.
“Get down!” screamed Jones, and Webb hit the ground in front as more bullets whined close by.
Bainbridge was far to Jones’s right, organising a small attack force, bullets keeping the men pinned down. “You two, follow me!” he bellowed, and the group of men crawled through the mud until they were sheltered and hiding behind the ragged remains of a fallen, scorched tree. An oak, scarred beyond all recognition.
“This is madness,” said Webb, eyes wide and staring at Jones.
Jones gave a nod. “Welcome to the front lines,” he said, with a curious neutrality.
“You see that pillbox?” growled Bainbridge, mad eyes roving over the group of men. “We’re taking it. Ready your weapons.”
“We’ll be cut down!” wailed Webb.
“——ing do it, or you’ll be shot for disobeying an order.”
Webb nodded.
Jones growled something incomprehensible.
Then they were up, ten of them, and storming up the sloping, churned ground. Jones’s eyes narrowed. Muzzle flashes flickered from the pillbox slit and he aimed, firing off three shots at the dark eye.
More men joined the charge, emerging from the smoke, eyes wide, faces either scared or twisted into snarls.
Bullets ripped through mud before him, ricocheting from a large chipped rock to Jones’s left. He tore his eyes from Bainbridge’s heroic assault and glanced around for Webb, but the Tommy had vanished, blending into the charging line of infantry ahead.
“Webb?” he called, dragging himself to his feet, clothes heavy with mud, colours unrecognisable.
He ran on, through the rain.
Bainbridge ducked a volley of bullets and turned to the two men behind him, but they were no longer there. They were corpses twisted on the ground.
“Bastard.”
He ran on, jumped down, crouched in a shell hole, watching the flashes from the Bergmann beyond the concrete slit. Bullets roared and Bainbridge waited patiently, counting, estimating. His ears picked up the series of clicks and he surged to his feet, pounding through the mud towards the pillbox as if his life depended on it. Which it did. Bainbridge knew a Bergmann machine gun had a curved ammunition box which could hold a two hundred–round belt. As he ran, he realised he had, what? Twenty seconds? Ten? Then they’d replace the belt and scythe him down . . .
A pistol cracked, a bullet whistling nearby. Bainbridge pumped a couple of rounds at the hole and saw chips of concrete erupt. And then he was past, crawling across dirt, the rear of the pillbox opening fast, a gun appearing. Bainbridge fired three shots from his Beholla, listened to the screams as the German went down, gurgling. Bainbridge could see a leg twitching.
But how many were there?
He moved carefully to the pillbox entrance, then glanced about. The door was slightly ajar, chipped by bullets. Leaning slowly to one side, he fired off a couple of shots into the split of black. There was a whump and slap. He heard a groan, and from inside came a thump, as of a body falling to the ground.
Silence.
Bainbridge kicked open the door, firing off his last shots into the darkness where they flickered sparks from the metal housing of the machine gun. Then he grinned.
“——ing brilliant!”
He crept inside, scanning the interior. The two Hun were dead.
“Got you, you bastards.”
There came a crack, and a flash from the floor. In disbelief, in that s
plit second, Bainbridge saw the German soldier’s face in the gloom, arm extended, a rifle in his grip.
The bullet took Bainbridge in the chest, punching him backwards from his feet, where he hit the wall of the pillbox. He dropped to his knees and fumbled to reload his Beholla.
But then a great roaring ocean surged up, and over him, and he remembered no more.
On the floor of the pillbox, the wounded German used his rifle to lever himself to his feet, where he swayed for a moment. He looked down at the shot Tommy, face twisting in a grimace of pain. He leant his back against the wall, lifted his rifle, his intention to put another bullet in the body, just to make sure. But then he swayed, and blood-slippery fingers dropped the rifle. He staggered across the pillbox floor and dropped into a seated position beside the machine gun.
His eyes closed. He licked trembling lips. He rested his helmet against the Bergmann with a dull clunk.
Just a short sleep, he thought.
Nobody will miss me. For a few moments.
God, I feel so tired.
Just a short sleep, and I’ll wake up back in the Fatherland, away from the mud.
Roman and Elska will stand by my side; I’ll take them to the festival, and I will teach Roman to drink Bockbier. I always said I would teach him to drink Bockbier when he was of age, when he was a man . . .
Sleep came, and with it the darkness of death.
Bainbridge groaned. He could taste metal. There was a spread of damp beneath his coat and he tried to reload his Beholla, but his fingers slipped and fumbled. He felt strength leaving him.
In the distance, the sounds of machine gun fire had lessened, and Bainbridge knew the Allies were close to taking the enemy trench.
But he felt so weak. So tired.
“Don’t you dare sleep, you bastard,” he growled. “To sleep is to die!”
Gathering his strength and coughing heavily, Bainbridge crawled out of the pillbox and into the rain. It felt good on his face. It felt good to be alive!
The ground was littered with corpses. He crawled over these, teeth gritted and speckled with blood. He’d lost his helmet and could not remember where.
He stopped. Rolled to his back. Listened to the boom of field guns. Enjoyed the cool rain on his fevered flesh.
Where are the stretcher bearers? Those ——ing body snatchers.
Where the —— are they?
He knew he couldn’t reach the trench alone. He coughed again, rolled back to his belly, and heaved his knees beneath him, slopping through mud.
Something moved within his chest, sending a fresh wave of agony and nausea slamming through him.
He tried to crawl, but his arms collapsed, and his face pushed into the welcome cool of the earth.
All he could hear was the whistling of crumps as the Fritzies retaliated and set up new lines . . . and screams from the trench behind as blockaded parts brought clashes of hand-to-hand combat to his ears.
So, he was nearby? Near to the German trench?
Where were the others? But . . . of course . . . they would find him, yes, Jones would find him, and the crumps would stop, and everything would be just ——ing fine.
A great grinding, thundering noise came to him; it was close. A flash flickered at the edge of his vision. Heat suddenly scythed across his back and legs, and he fell tumbling into a tombworld of unconsciousness.
Jones crouched in the German trench. The men had formed a ragged wall of rifles, firing at the retreating German soldiers, rifles crackling like fireworks, watching the Hun sprint across their now-deserted camps, many hitting the ground on their faces as bullets found their mark.
The Tommies moved out, careful, kicking down tents and pushing over barrels and crates with bayonets. Pistols cracked in the distance, leaving echoing reverberations. The machine guns had finally stopped, and smoke curled through the air.
Jones thought briefly about Webb, but he was too busy keeping himself alive.
Webb was on his own.
Jones got to his feet, his rifle at the ready, slippery and cold. Bainbridge had been right: the heavy bombardment of artillery had made the field a treacherous place for an attack.
Something flickered in his mind.
Where was that grumpy old bastard?
To his right, Jones could see the few remaining trees of Polygon Wood rising out of the gloom. Several distant trees provided light as flames soared upwards from their branches.
Flashes from field guns and mortars hidden in the blackened, scorched woods made him half-duck in fear, but the missiles were not too close.
He followed his fellow Tommies across the camp, towards the retreating Hun.
Aiming, his rifle cracked. A German hit the ground, screaming. The sound was lost to Jones.
And all he could think was:
I wish this would all end.
I wish I could go home.
I want to be warm again.
I no longer want to be hunted . . .
Diary of Robert Jones.
3rd. Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
1st. August 1917.
I feel dirty. Debased. Impure.
At least I still have my life, as I sit here, alone, shivering by candlelight, wondering where Bainbridge and Webb have got to. I hope they are not dead. Please God, don’t let them be dead.
I will tour the hospitals soon. Maybe I’ll find them there. I hope so. I pray.
I was going to write down my experiences during the assault, but what’s the point now? It’s all been written before, so many glorified accounts, soldiers, warriors, heroes. No matter how grim a picture I paint, there will always be those who have bright excited eyes, who think War is romantic, exciting, a beast to be tamed. I learnt about the pleasures of life the hard way; life in a sanatorium when you are a boy is not an enjoyable experience. Four years. Four years of my life in that stinking rat hole . . . but rather a life in a sanatorium than here in the trenches. Strangely, the two experiences are similar. The stench. The cold. Only here the enemy are the Hun, men like you and me . . . whereas inside the sanatorium, the enemy was within us, around us in the guise of warders and inmates and the scum who used to beat me through pillows held against my back so as to leave no bruising . . .
I will not write of the battle. Once, six months ago, I was sick to death of war. That sickness has passed, and now I feel only emptiness. I cannot have dreams. How can I have dreams for the future, when I could die at any moment? How can I dream of going back to Sarah, apologising, making it right again, marriage, having children—children! Future bullet fodder, to be used by this great machine of War.
I apologise. My thoughts are dark.
I will go and look for George. I will look for Bainbridge as well—I only hope they have lived through this madness. But how will I explain to Marie if her brother has died?
How?
Ypres Salient (3rd. Battle of).
“No Man’s Land.”
2nd. August 1917 (early morning).
IT WAS THE COLD of ice, the cold of the grave, the cold of the tombworld. The iciness had passed, beyond pain and mere discomfort. This was heart-deep and filled Webb’s mind with a numbing ferocity; it blanketed the fear and the pain, and when he groaned, his lower lip cracked open with blood trickling down his chin.
Water. He needed water.
He tried to open his eyes, but they were nailed shut. He coughed, a pitiful wheezing, and moved a hand, ever so slowly, and cried out as it brushed something sharp and a fresh wave of pain flowed into his mind, his core, and he screamed silently, mouth open, no sounds emerging as the fire fought the ice across his eyes and through his skull and down the back of his neck and down his spine . . .
When he awoke, he was warmer. Damp. He moved his hand again—the pain biting him like a dog—and fumbled for his canteen, but it was gone. He moved his hand to his face, opened his eyes, opened his eyes into . . .
Darkness.
“I’m blind.”
His voice was sof
t, calm, touched with a deep sadness and a fear rooted in his soul. His fingers gently brushed against the weeping flesh of his cheek. And he realised why the cold had left him . . . it was blood, his blood, soaking him.
He reached behind himself, could feel the jutting splinters of sharp metal, slippery under fingers, poking from his back and rib cage; obscene metal erections digging, piercing into flesh . . . he managed to get a grip on one piece, but it bit him, and he did not have the strength to pull it free.
“You ——er.”
The effort left him panting, licking cracked and bleeding lips. He eased himself onto his belly and lay there, burnt cheek in the cool mud, soothing him, bathing him with its purity.
“Mother?”
She stood beside him, he knew. She was talking to him, her words sweet and beautiful, despite her coughing and pain-filled voice. She was soothing him with her love. She was praying for him.
“Don’t pray for me, Mother.”
She prayed anyway. And then reached out, her fingers curling between Webb’s fingers, her hand warm and comforting, somehow holy. Webb started to cry, but she soothed his tears, and the pure mud took them into the ground, to be part of the earth, part of the world.
She was talking to him, but her words seemed strange, alien, and he could not understand her. Her voice crackled and hissed, like the whispering leaves of the trees, the creak of branches, the scuff of bark on bark.
He could feel her, feel the cleansed flesh of her body, and she was no longer dying, no longer had the cancer, and she would live, yes! she would live and would take him back home to England and there she would nurse him back to health as she had done so many times when he was a little boy and she would no longer be weak no longer riddled with horror and the promise of death no she would be fit and healthy and the beautiful mother he knew from his youth before diseases of flesh caught her in their terrible snare . . .
“Mother, hold me,” he whimpered.
And she held him, her arms encircling his body, pressing lightly against the shrapnel in his flesh and making him scream. He screamed loud and long. And wept. And yet, at the same time, he wanted to laugh, so great was his joy, so great was his hope, and the two feelings fought for precedence until they mingled in an almost orgasmic feeling of warmth and comfort which filled his body and mind and soul right down to the roots of the world . . .