by Burden, Diem
The man was terrified and confused. “Where am I? Where am I?”
“There’s been an accident,” said Cat. “Help is on its way.”
I had five years of highly realistic first aid training to draw on and I should have been prepared for this, but those dolls and actors never screamed like this and their legs were always reachable. They were never in danger of dying in my hands like he was and that just scared the crap out of me. Okay, okay, so what do we do? He’s going to die unless we help him; we’re totally alone and it’s up to us now. Come on! Think, man, think! Whether this man lives or dies depends on what we do next.
Breathing, bleeding, breaks and burns! That’s it; the mantra that had been rammed down our throats year after year so that we wouldn’t forget. It worked; I hadn’t forgotten it.
Take it one step at a time, breathing first. Check. Yes, he was breathing.
Bleeding. Check. He was certainly bleeding; from his face, his arms, his hands, from everywhere! Okay, keep calm; it’s blood, but it’s not pouring out, just seeping. Not enough leakage to kill him, from what I could see. I glanced further down his body, to where his legs vanished under that huge machine lying on the flimsy roof. There was no way of knowing if they were still attached to him. For all we knew, he didn’t have any legs left and he’d be dead in no time, no matter what we did.
“Try the seat, Cat,” I said. “See if you can release it somehow, slide it back.” It was an automatic reaction, a desperate attempt to get a dying man out of a crumpled car.
Cat blindly groped around the base of the deformed seat for the release handle, but found it to be jammed. He eventually managed to force the lever open as we worked together, pulling on the seat. It was difficult to find a position to apply leverage, a bit like trying to push a small refrigerator door open with your feet, from the inside. I pleaded for the seat to come back, away from the oppressive weight of that digger.
The seat jolted backwards a few inches, causing the man to yell out in abject pain, tearing something awful inside of me. I fought the urge not to try again, but we had no choice. Fortunately for him it wouldn’t budge, but unfortunately, we still couldn’t see his legs.
I was pleased that we’d managed to release the pressure from his legs, if only slightly. Then I realised that perhaps we shouldn’t have done that; he might well bleed to death down there, and there would be nothing we could do about it. I didn’t want the driver to know this, but I did want Cat to realise it.
“Check for any bleeding around his legs, Cat,” I said. “See if you can get your hand down and have a feel around.” Cat didn’t need telling twice and tentatively checked around, squeezing his fingers into the gap between the man’s legs and the roof. The driver yelled at his touch.
“Sorry, just checking for damage,” Cat told him. He pulled his hand out and held it up to the light.
I dreaded seeing blood dripping from his fingers. They were red, but it was just smeared blood. I breathed out – we hadn’t killed him.
Okay, breathing and bleeding sorted; now for the breaks and burns.
Breaks? Under the present circumstances, I didn’t think it mattered too much if the guy had any broken bones. He wasn’t going to be moved any time soon, and I was sure he wasn’t going to die from any broken bones, even if his legs were all smashed to pieces.
And finally burns. He had no burns to worry about because there was no fire. Fire? I could smell the fuel; it was actually quite overpowering but I hadn’t been aware of it until that point. The whole car was sitting on a lake of fuel, gallons of the stuff having leaked from the impacted vehicles. If this thing did catch fire the poor bastard would burn to death and there’d be nothing we could do to help him. If we didn’t get caught up in the inferno and perish with him, we’d have to sit on the side of the road and listen to him die.
I wanted to panic – it was the easiest option, but I forced myself to focus. I knew the digger was full of diesel and there was no way diesel would ignite; I knew this for a fact. However, the car was full of petrol, as most cars were back then, and petrol does catch fire. Easily. As a POM, I was able to tell the difference between diesel and petrol just from the smell, but that basic skill failed me when I needed it most.
I silently and exaggeratedly sniffed the air at Cat’s face. He sniffed back and frowned at me. I shrugged. Which is it? He shook his head. No idea. We both understood that we were completely powerless at that point, and that we needed professional help and fast. I remembered we were not alone.
“Sarge!” I yelled out of the back window.
It took a while for him to reappear. He’d been with Donk, asking motorists to turn around and find a phone box in the nearby village and call for an ambulance.
“Sarge, we need serious help here! Driver’s well trapped and badly injured. We need fire and rescue and quick!” I considered telling him about the fuel too, but I didn’t want to add to the driver’s worries. Nothing could be done about that until fire and rescue arrived anyway.
“Need the first aid kit from the truck?” he shouted back helpfully.
I knew the box of plasters he was on about. “No, a waste of time; we need a medic and we need one now!”
“Hang in there; the ambulance should be well on its way. I’ll chase up the fire brigade!” He ran off back to Donk at the head of the line of traffic, briefed him and then ran to the other end of the road to Pizza and did the same.
We didn’t know exactly where we were or which village was closest. We just needed somebody to get to a phone and make the call. We didn’t know if any of the drivers were making the calls; none came back to tell us they had, because they couldn’t with the huge traffic queues that had built up. We just hoped they had.
Smudge briefly reappeared and asked if we were all right. We weren’t; we were very worried. It’d be at least thirty minutes before the first emergency services arrived at our isolated accident site. We honestly believed that this man would die before any help got remotely near us.
There was little we could do except to talk to him, keep him calm and offer some kind of reassurance. It was quite a task, trying to take his mind off the twenty tonnes of machinery lying two inches from his face, as fuel dripped onto the tarmac beneath us, mixing with his blood.
“Is there anybody we can contact for you?” asked Cat. “A wife or someone we can call to come here?”
That was good thinking; if the guy was to die, he might want to do it holding hands with the one he loved, and not a couple of terrified, sweating squaddies. I looked at the squashed passenger seat next to him and hoped she was at home.
He battled with his thoughts for a few moments, then spoke. “Robin; the name’s Robin.”
“You want us to call Robin?” I asked.
“No,” he said, fighting back the pain of talking. “It’s my name; I’m Robin...”
In all the panic and fear, we hadn’t even asked the guy his name.
“Okay, Robin. Who can we call for you?”
I fished out a small notebook and pencil I always carried with me when working. With great effort, he gave me a name, address and telephone number, which he said was his wife’s. As I finished jotting it down a loud female voice made me jump.
“Hey, hey, hey!” she cried out. “Calm down, will you? I’m just trying to help you.”
I looked out of the shattered rear window and saw a man and woman in the moonlight. The woman was trying to shine a torch into the face of a tall soldier I didn’t recognise. A bit of a scuffle ensued and the soldier cursed the civilian woman, swinging his arms violently, knocking her away. I stared at them, speechless.
“Who the fuck are they?” I whispered.
“Buggered if I know,” said Cat. “Go and check it out; we’ll be all right in here.”
I hesitated but Cat was insistent, so I scrambled out of the back window and stood on the road, breathing in the fresh air. Smudge reappeared and joined me, and together we approached the strangers on the road.
“Let me see; let me see,” I pleaded, calmly and firmly, knowing that soldiers responded to that kind of tone. I gently removed his hand from his face to see where all the blood was coming from, but he pulled it back quickly.
The woman rejoined us with her torch, causing the man to pull away from me slightly.
“It’s okay, I’m just gonna take a look,” I said, trying to sound calm. “But I need the torch, okay?”
He accepted my help, but still glared at the woman as she shone the torch on his face.
I removed his hand again but something momentarily stuck to it before it swung free and hung down his left cheek. It took me a few seconds to recognise what I was looking at – it was his left eye, hanging out of the socket and dangling on a bit of bloody thread. I swallowed deeply and turned away before turning back.
“Okay, we need to take a look at that,” I said, surprising myself. “This lady’s a medic; she’s gonna help you.” I was only too glad to hand him over to somebody better qualified than me.
I encouraged him to sit down on the side of the road, speaking constantly, the training finally kicking in. He was clearly in shock; talking to people I could do easily, but a dangling eye was something else.
I think he understood that I was another soldier and that he needed help. I managed to get through to him, calm him down and hand him over to the first aider. She pushed me aside but I let it go – I was glad to hand him over to somebody who claimed to know what they were doing. She seemed able to attend to such injuries, whereas I had no idea what you do with an eye hanging out. I don’t think I wanted to know.
She set about him with authority and, as she clearly knew what she was doing and the casualty was now accepting of her, I stood up to speak to Smudge.
“Where the fuck did he come from?” he asked.
I looked around and saw nothing but the black mass of the squashed civilian car with our digger on top of it. There were no other vehicles to be seen.
“Could he have been in the car?” asked Smudge.
“No, not possible.” I knew he couldn’t have been in the front seat, but neither could he have been in the back seat. There wasn’t a drop of blood in the back seat – I would have noticed. “You haven’t seen any other smashed-up vehicles on your travels, have you?” I asked.
Smudge shook his head.
I bent down to the casualty and spoke gently, noticing three stripes on his epaulette. “Listen, Sergeant. Where exactly did you come from?”
The woman attending to him looked at me irritatedly.
“What?” he replied, confused.
“You’re not with us; you’re not from that,” I said, indicating the pile-up behind me. “So where exactly did you come from?”
“The bloody army Land Rover, obviously,” he snapped.
I stood up and looked around. “What bloody Land Rover?”
“Tommo, where’s Tommo?” the man suddenly called out, looking around and trying to get to his feet, causing the first aider to let go of a bandage she had been fastening around his head.
She stared at me angrily. I put my hands on his shoulders and prevented him from standing. He sat back down.
“Tommo?” he whispered, looking up at me questioningly, worryingly, whilst not making much sense. He then began sobbing uncontrollably.
I ignored the woman’s protests and looked at Smudge. Tommo was the standard nickname for anybody in the army whose surname was Thomas or Thompson, and we both knew that a Land Rover was the standard mode of transport for the military, but who was Tommo and what Land Rover was he talking about? Then I remembered.
“Oh shit, of course.” I turned to Smudge. “That lump of metal back there in the road which we passed earlier? The TV thing?”
Smudge nodded.
“I think I know what it is! It’s the engine block of a Land Rover; his Land Rover.”
“So where the hell is the rest of it, then?” asked Smudge.
We instinctively looked around. Our truck was parked further up the road, its hazard lights still flashing. The outline of the engine block could just be seen in its amber lights, between us and the truck. Beyond that, on the brow of a hill, we could see car headlights as Pizza stopped the traffic, spoke to the drivers and turned them around. Behind us was the main accident site, with Cat inside, illuminated by the car’s interior light. Beyond that, more cars were being stopped and turned around by Donk. Out to the sides we saw nothing but the darkness of the plain.
“Where did he come from?” I asked the first aider.
She dismissively pointed over the squaddy’s shoulder into the darkness, loath to speak to me. I wanted to slap her. I stared at her, my eyes demanding a better answer.
“He just appeared from out of the darkness over there,” she said primly, pointing. “He scared the poo out of me,” she said, trying to swear. As she spoke, a huge figure ran from around the back of the digger and trailer, startling all three of us.
“Fucking hell, Donk, you scared the shit out of us!” snapped Smudge.
“Sorry, Sarge. Don’t wanna miss all the action, do I?” he said excitedly, eager to get involved.
A few minutes earlier a helpful civilian had stopped his car and volunteered his services to Donk, at which point Donk had legged it into the darkness, leaving the poor Good Samaritan standing alone on the road turning traffic around. Donk wanted to be involved more; he resented being stuck on traffic control well away from the accident. He couldn’t take his eyes off the guy’s blood-soaked, bandaged head.
“Who’s he?” he asked, too loudly.
I looked at the injured soldier and recalled his aggression earlier. An excitable Donk was the last thing we needed right now. Damn that helpful civilian for releasing Donk.
“Sarge, if it’s all right with you, I’ll take Donk and go look for the other guy – this Tommo? Could you stay here with the lady?” I tactfully asked, nodding at the soldier’s back. Smudge understood my meaning and accepted. He seemed relieved at my suggestion.
“Donk, you’re with me. We need to find a Land Rover with a guy called Tommo in it, check out if he’s okay.”
Donk smiled and nodded enthusiastically.
“Any chance of lending us your torch?” I asked the first aider.
“No chance, sorry. I can’t do my work in darkness,” she said, leaving no room for argument.
“You got a torch, Bruce?” I asked, using Donk’s correct name, although I always thought that Donk sounded far nicer than Bruce. He hadn’t. I looked up; we could do with the moonlight but it was obscured by clouds again.
“Okay mate, let’s spread out a bit. There must be an engine-less Land Rover out there somewhere and, if we find that, we’ll likely find Tommo.”
We walked off into the darkness, eyes straining to see something, minds hoping not to. What I’d seen so far was more than enough horror for one lifetime, but was there more to come? I had to brace myself for what we might see, for what we might have to deal with out on that empty plain. I regretted not paying more attention in our first aid classes now and cursed the police for not being there. The crash seemed to have happened so long ago but, in truth, only about thirty minutes had passed since that first impact.
Come on, Tommo, where the hell are you? I called his name, thinking that if he was lying on the grass injured somewhere, he might hear me and respond. Instead it was Donk who answered.
“Dave! Dave! Over here!”
Part one of THE ROZZERS by DIEM BURDEN
o0o
CHAPTER THREE
As I h
urried towards Donk’s voice the moon reappeared, thankfully casting some light on the grasses of the plain. Just ahead of me a large, dark shape loomed. I ran closer and a Land Rover appeared in a very sorry state. It looked like it had been bombed out but had defied the explosion and remained upright, its doors hanging open.
“Donk?” I shouted.
His voice came back from the other side of the vehicle. I quickly joined him and found him kneeling on the grass, leaning over a dark shape, giving mouth to mouth resuscitation.
I knelt next to them, my heart beating madly. I watched Donk as he blew air into the man. My mind was in a whirl – I was about to apply CPR for real for the first time. I looked up and down the road for any signs of blue lights. Nothing. I tried to recall which of the ever-changing rates of heart compressions I should use as my fingers felt his chest for the right place to compress.
“Too hard, Donk, you’re blowing too hard!”
He was; you didn’t need to be a medic to know this, but he didn’t hear me. I took the guy’s wrist to feel for a pulse. It was stone cold. I frowned and leant over Tommo to check his injuries, having to forcibly push Donk off. Donk pushed me back angrily – he was determined to bring this guy back.
“Donk, wait! Just a second, will you?”
The man’s head flopped unnaturally to one side. Even in the darkness I could see how young he was and how freely his head moved. He had dark, matted hair which I assumed was blood soaked. I probed around his head with my fingers, ignoring the blood. I touched a huge hole in the back of his head.
“Come on! I gotta breathe for him!” shouted Donk.
The man’s injury was clearly fatal. There was no way he could have survived that and there was nothing we could do to bring him back.
“He’s dead,” I said, staring at the young man’s peaceful face.
“He can’t be, not till a doctor says!” Donk pushed me aside and restarted his over-ambitious mouth to mouth. He was determined to bring him back to life and repeatedly blew air into the guy in ever more desperate breaths.