A Song for No Man's Land

by Andy Remic

  The rain woke him, pounding him.

  Webb’s mother had gone.

  He tried to blink, but the movement brought only pain.

  Shit. She had gone. Now he felt only emptiness.

  Water soaked Webb’s hair and trickled down his cheeks, cooling his flesh, and he could feel the coldness of the metal in his body, an alien intrusion.

  Fight, he told himself.

  Do it for your mother . . .

  And he knew what he had to do: he had to get back to the trench. That was where she waited. Her spirit. Her reborn flesh. She would be there for him. She would help him. She would take him home and nurse him and everything would be all right again.

  Rain hammered him. Fell heavy.

  Webb rolled to his back, driving shrapnel deeper, and a scream burst from cracked and bloody lips, loud, deafening, echoing out over No Man’s Land, a wail, a song, a song for No Man’s Land which pierced the silence and darkness and horror and mud and the very veil of death which hung over this place.

  He gritted his teeth, and with an intense show of obstinacy, and pride, and anger, he heaved himself to his hands and knees, ignoring the pain and the fire as he clenched his fists deep into the churned mud and blood, nausea filling him with bile.

  Webb breathed deep. He was breathing. He was alive.

  He started to crawl through the mud, struggling against the pain within and the elements without; suddenly, his hand came up against something hard and cold and rough. He stopped. He lifted his hand to the rough texture; caressed it.

  Concrete.

  He laughed. It was a pillbox.

  But which way to the Allied trench?

  His laugh faded quick.

  What would happen if he travelled the wrong way and in blindness found himself over the Huns’ wires? He would never reach his mother, never find peace, never be warm, never return home.

  Think. Think!

  The pillbox—the German pillbox—that was the answer. It would have slots on the side facing the Allies, and a doorway to the rear. Slowly, Webb worked his hands up the concrete face, grunting as the metal in his flesh grated against two ribs and fired him with fresh waves of washing, undulating pain. But he could not feel anything under his fingertips . . .

  Too low. Too low.

  He would have to stand up. He would have to do the one thing which was beyond him . . . and in grim determination, he dug his cracked and broken nails into the chipped concrete and started to heave, his panting now coming in shallow bursts, his eyes blinking despite the pain this caused, salt sweat stinging the wounds on his back, tears coursing down his torn cheeks as biceps screamed protest and his back screamed white agony and his body wailed the song which echoed around his skull, caged, locked inside, and his fingers scrabbled against the firing aperture just as his legs buckled and he fell away onto his face, and welcomed the blackness as an end to pain.

  Webb slept for a million years. In his dreams, he flowed down to the roots of the world, entwined with the very bedrock of the planet.

  He awoke.

  The rain continued to drum against his twisted helmet. He opened his mouth and welcomed the water into his parched throat, soothing his lips and tongue and cheeks and eyes—ah, the bliss of cool rain on damaged eyelids!

  The pain had receded. It had become a weary demon within him. He managed to climb to his knees and began to crawl again, this time sure of his direction, sure of his destination; this fired him with vigour, hope, and the last remnants of belief.

  He encountered bodies as he crawled. Both ally and enemy, he could tell by groping at their helmets, their uniforms, and he managed to find himself a knife which he tucked into his damaged belt with shaking fingers.

  He crawled over the bodies, finding it easier to go over than around, using their stiffened limbs as hand-holds to drag himself forward.

  And as he crawled, he heard the voice. It was weeping softly, then growling in anger, then crying, “Father, you bastard, I curse you!” in words filled with phlegm and spitting and loathing . . .

  Webb crawled on. The voice shifted closer. “Hey!” shouted Webb, although his own voice was shaky, a barely audible croak.

  The cursing subsided. The owner of the voice became silent.

  Webb crawled in the direction of the voice, over more broken bodies, through the dragging mud. The drumming of rain on his helmet began to drive him mad, so with one hand he tugged it off and flung it away, where it splashed into invisible gloom.

  “Is that you, Webb?” Webb didn’t recognise the voice, for the words were spoken slow, through clenched teeth.

  “Yes,” he managed, eventually, crawling towards the figure, and bumping into him, then slumping to the mud by the man’s side. “My name’s Webb.”

  They lay there for about a minute, neither speaking. “Are you wounded?” managed Webb. The man laughed, a sound that bubbled in his lungs.

  “Aye. I am that.”

  Webb ran a hand across his forehead, then asked, “Is it still night?” But even as he asked the words, a soft light started to filter into his vision. He had been damaged, but his eyesight was beginning to return.

  “No. Early morning. It will be dawn soon. And the gunners will see us.”

  More silence. The man started to groan softly. “This is awful, Webb. I can’t stand this pain. It’s eating me. It’s ——ing eating me . . .”

  “Who are you? Do I know you?”

  Webb frowned, trying to ignore his own pain, trying to ignore the feeling of utter despair in this wounded soldier’s voice. And then the man spoke again, and his words tore through Webb’s lack of clarity.

  “Bainbridge,” said the man, his voice still strange, alien. “And I’m proper dying, lad. Got a serious bellyache!” Even as he spoke he coughed, and laughed, and tiny droplets spattered Webb’s face.

  Webb flinched. Then, gently, he reached out and took Bainbridge’s hand. He felt for a pulse in the wrist. It was weak. Fluttering. “The body snatchers will find us,” whispered Webb.

  But Bainbridge had passed into unconsciousness, and Webb sat for a while, his own pain distant, remembering Bainbridge’s words of anger back in the trench, words of hatred spat from angered lips, the jibes, the put-downs, the pain . . . pain of the mind, pain of the soul.

  “I hate you,” said Webb in the rain, smiling, looking down at Bainbridge with damaged eyes. He could picture the man’s face in his mind, with a snarl, or a grimace of anger . . . and he could not find a memory of Bainbridge with a smile.

  “Are you there?” Bainbridge’s hand came up suddenly, gripped Webb’s arm, his grip tight, his fingers clammy and cold. “Are you there, Father? I hate you, I hate your ——ing whining, your pitiful moans. Can’t you leave me alone now? I’m dying, damn you . . . Leave me to die in peace.”

  “Bainbridge?” Webb’s voice was soft.

  “Shut up; I’ll never forgive you, you bastard . . .” And then he started to cry, sobs shaking his huge frame, and moving closer, Webb stroked Bainbridge’s hair and cradled the giant sergeant’s head in his lap.

  “Be calm,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean it.” More tears. “You make me angry. I didn’t mean it . . . I love you, really, love you to death. I’d do anything for you. Please don’t shout.”

  Webb sat for many minutes, silent, mouth a grim line as Bainbridge rambled aimlessly, talking to soldiers long dead, talking to a father long gone, making peace with himself; making peace with his soul.

  Webb felt great sadness descend on his shoulders. He no longer had hate within him. Once, he wished Bainbridge dead. But now he saw that for what it was. Bainbridge was simply a man who was lost and alone, a man filled with anger and pride, now reduced to whimpering like a babe in Webb’s arms.

  Suddenly, Bainbridge went quiet.

  Webb shook him.

  “Don’t die on me, Bainbridge, don’t you ——ing die on me! Come on, talk to me! I’m here to listen! They’ll find us soon, I promise, find us and carry
us back to the trench.”

  “George?”

  The word was said with such calm that Webb jumped.

  “Yes, Sergeant?”

  “I’m sorry . . . about what I called you. You aren’t a . . . coward, lad. I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I . . . I cannot forget. It’s burning me, boy, can’t you see? I had too much anger. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “I just wanted to hurt everyone. It’s this place. It changed me. I . . . I’ve done so many foolish things. I’ve hurt so many people. Can you see that?”

  “Yes,” whispered Webb, nodding, waiting for Bainbridge to continue. But Bainbridge lay back, wincing in pain, his breathing fast and shallow.

  Webb didn’t know what to do. But slowly, as the dawn broke, so his vision returned to some semblance of clarity. He could see blasted trees. Torn stone walls. A smashed house, only two walls still standing.

  Bainbridge’s breathing was like an erratic rhythm.

  “I need to get help,” muttered Webb, and gently he laid the wounded sergeant in the mud. He forced himself to his knees and looked around, tried to work out the direction of the Allied trench. And as he looked up, he saw three large figures, shrouded in black, their glittering eyes watching, their muzzles curled in amusement.

  “We found you,” said one.

  “Just look at them squirm,” said another.

  “More meat for our machine.”

  Webb stared, unsure of what he was looking at. They wore German uniforms, helmets merging with flesh, and yet their faces were very far from human. They carried Hun rifles, and Webb’s observation finished by fixating on the dark, gleaming bayonets.

  They moved forward then, lifting their rifles, their muzzles drooling, their eyes hard and alien. Webb’s hands came up as if to ward off attack, but they stepped past him, and all three surrounded Bainbridge.

  Bainbridge opened his eyes. He grinned a grin of violence.

  “What are you ugly mothers staring at?” he snarled.

  One walrider thrust forward, and its bayonet skewered Bainbridge’s shoulder. He screamed, kicking his legs, but was pinned there by the bayonet. There was a crack as his clavicle snapped.

  “No!” screamed Webb, launching to his feet, launching at the creatures, but a walrider turned and back-handed him savagely, claws scoring deep lines across Webb’s cheek, nearly tearing it free in a big flap of skin and pissing blood. Webb was sent spinning up, over, slammed into the mud.

  They turned their attention back to Bainbridge. The large Tommy was laughing from a mask of blood.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” he gurgled. “Even my sister could take you down, you feeble little maggots.”

  The other two walriders plunged in bayonets, one piercing Bainbridge’s chest, one piercing his throat. They stood there, their massive figures immobile, their rifles extensions of their evil, the three slivers of steel slicing through flesh and muscle and tendon and bone.

  Bainbridge convulsed. One leg kicked. And he went terribly still, there in the mud.

  Maybe it was a dream. A nightmare. Possibly a vision from heaven, or hell. All Webb understood was that he was there, floating in the cool breeze, gazing down from a great height, seeking his comrades in the murk far below.

  He felt like a bird. A bird spirit that had emerged from the darkness after a hundred years of solitude. He desperately needed company; he searched for his friends but found only death.

  He floated in the breeze. It ruffled his hair, filled his senses with its perfume. The pain had gone. He reached behind himself but could find no intrusion of metal.

  He was healed.

  And he could see with perfect clarity!

  He drank in the land like wine, revelled in the vision swimming before him. It was ecstasy made real, a solid thing he could see and touch and feel. And yet he gazed down on nothing alive. Everything was slaughter. Everything was destruction.

  The dawn crept near, like a frightened child.

  Singular strands of solid light oozed across a distant infinity. Below, solid black stalks reared towards the sky, and towards God, like accusatory fingers. The dead trees pointed, in their embrace of oblivion, ugly, charred, and hopeless.

  A desecration.

  Debris littered the ground between the dead tree trunks and the corpses. Abandoned crates. Boots. Old duckboards and rusting barbed wire. The corpses themselves were twisted, horrible, unholy, mouths open, gaping silent curses at God and Hell and Man. They were mud-streaked, and bloodied, and broken, and bent like tossed marionettes. Their blasted, excised veins were strings and they danced a jig in honour of a race cursed by its own self-harming hand.

  He watched. Smoke flowed across the battlefield. Grey smoke, thin, empty of substance, like gruel. Looking left and right, he could see no life. It was as if he embraced another realm, as if he had been carried by the angels to a plane of existence one step above life . . . and the smoke flowed over the bodies, Germans and French, British and Americans, Australians and Belgians . . . The smoke curled lazily across the corpses, and as he watched, he could see it grow and dance and then solidify with each passing spiral. As if each man, lying twisted in horror, was adding an essence to the whole, becoming a glorious unity, a celebration of life rather than a condemnation of death.

  He flew then, faster than light, speeding down, seeking friends and enemies, searching faces amongst the nameless, frozen ranks of countless bodies. But their souls had gone, passed away to some higher place, leaving flesh shells like hollow trees, broken bark, smashed wooden totems of innocence and futility laid out on the ground between the chipped pillboxes, between churned trenches, between the wire and the shell holes and the shit.

  He was dragged free and lifted above the smoke. The land was desolate below him, littered with husks of wood, corpses carved from the earth and returning to the earth. He could hear their song, hear their heartsong, as they joined the eternal spirit and the wind sighed in the heavens and the souls sped with laughter, singing, singing their song for No Man’s Land.

  Pain speared him. Reality came crashing back.

  He coughed blood, which dribbled down his chin.

  He could hear voices—muffled, as through a dark green ocean.

  He tried to move but could not.

  Felt himself sinking, spiralling down into the graveworld.

  Ypres Salient (3rd. Battle of).

  “Truth.”

  2nd. August 1917 (early morning).

  A PIT IN THE EARTH. Webb crawled in. Curled up. Wished for death. He could still hear Bainbridge’s death cries. Still see the walriders, their bayonets piercing the large Tommy’s flesh.

  “You bastards,” he muttered. “You bastards.”

  And then a voice. A voice he thought impossible. A voice from dark dreams . . .

  Webb was lying foetal, the shrapnel in his side and back disguised by black mud. He screamed, and Jones placed a hand on his friend’s head, dropped his rifle, and took the man’s hand, squeezing it in reassurance.

  “George? It’s me, Robert. I’m here to take you back. You’re going home to Wales, lad. Your time in the war is over.”

  “It’s too late, too late,” whispered Webb.

  “No, man, you’ll be okay,” Jones lied, swallowing hard and holding back tears.

  “Was she beautiful, Robert? Beautiful?”

  “Who, George?”

  “My mother. When you saw her at the end. Did she glow, like all the angels?”

  “Yes. She glowed, my friend.”

  Webb screamed again, then lay moaning, unmoving. Jones gave a quick glance across No Man’s Land. They were sitting targets out there in the gloom. Sitting ——ing ducks.

  “I can’t move, Robert. I can’t move!”

  “It’s okay; it’s just shock.” Jones hated himself for the lie, for he had seen the shrapnel in Webb’s back, sharp iron slicing close to Webb’s spine. “You’ll recover soon, lad. We’ll have a
drink in the pub and laugh about old times.”

  “Where’s Bainbridge? Did you see Bainbridge?”

  “Here, let me help you.”

  With all his strength, Jones hoisted Webb up, grabbed his rifle, and slid and crawled up the slope of the shell hole. He stood there, with flares lighting the sky, and the flash of crumps sparking in the distance. Bullets clattered. Tanks droned.

  A cool wind blew across No Man’s Land. It carried the gentle symphony of war.

  And then Jones saw them. Three huge figures. The beasts which hunted him.

  His eyes went hard, and his jaw went tight.

  “I’m just going to put you down here for a minute, Webb,” he said, lowering his wounded friend to the mud.

  “Oh, my God,” breathed Webb. “It’s them!” Jones glanced at him. “They murdered Bainbridge. Stabbed him to death with their bayonets . . .”

  Jones narrowed his eyes. “Well, it’s time somebody taught them a lesson,” he growled, and his rifle came up, and he started to fire, operating the bolt, firing again. Bullets whined across No Man’s Land, impacting with the huge figures who lowered their heads, muzzles drooling, and charged, their own rifles spitting fire and bullets . . .

  They were a terrible sight. Webb watched, whimpering, from the ground.

  The creatures powered forward, unstoppable, demons of mud and flesh and stolen Hun form.

  Jones leapt forward, a final bullet crashing into the face of a walrider, punching it back from its feet, where its legs started to kick. A huge fist full of claws and skin like bark crashed into Jones’s head, but he spun with the blow, his rifle sweeping out and back, the bayonet slicing across a leg, cutting fabric, slicing skin and bone. The walrider screamed. Jones came up fast, leaping at a beast, his fist hitting its muzzle, snapping a yellow fang, slicing his knuckle to the bone. But the third walrider leapt on his back, bearing him down. He slammed his head back, once, twice, three times, snapping fangs like twigs, but its weight was too great. Something hit Jones in the back of the head, and stars spun through his skull, and he groaned, tasting grit, tasting mud, tasting blood.