by Thomas Wood
Could I really justify the lives of about six or seven men, when the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, were in question here? More than that, if I was to be injured, or killed by an exploding ammunition crate, who, if anyone would look after Harry? Would it put him in even more danger than he already was? That was if he was even still alive right now.
I locked eyes with Sapper Taylor once again, who had been staring at me, awaiting my commands but at the same time, dealing with a tempest of emotions just like I had been.
“Get to the battery, take my PHE, and run like anything, I'll be right behind you!”
I yanked the haversack off my back that contained much of my ordnance and tossed it to him, “Go on, get out of here!”
The Horsa was packed with smoke, denser than anything I had ever seen before in my life, all that I could see was a wall of pure white smoke. A tracer or a round from one of the machineguns must have passed through the container housing the smoke bombs that we were bringing in, triggering all of them off at once.
I started calling out into the fog, “If you can move, make your way to my voice, make your way to my voice.” I heard a few thumps before a figure outlined itself against the cloud.
“That you, Sergeant Major?”
“Yes lad, go on out the hole, just there,” I pushed back towards the end of the Horsa, where it had split and created a wide opening at the back of the aircraft.
I was concerned that other kit was under the benches, still smouldering away, I could either try pulling it out, crate by crate and piece by piece, but that could have made matters worse. Instead, I opted for finding myself a seat on one of the benches, and began sliding alongside it, shuffling from one end of the fuselage to the other, hoping to bump into any lifeless figures along the way.
Just as I slammed into one, heavily laden body, a voice, like God talking to Abraham, spoke in the confusion.
“Sergeant Major, it's me, let me help.” The sapper must have had a conscience that was comfortable with disobeying an order, but it was something that I was very grateful to hear at that particular moment.
“Where's the PHE?”
“Outside, Sir, left it by the tree to the left as we exit.”
I began to choke as the smoke began to supersede the amount of oxygen that I had flowing through my body.
“Right, I'm over here, help me drag this one out, quickly!”
Together, we dragged, grunted and choked, back towards the opening in the Horsa. It can't have taken us any more than five seconds to get there, but when you're yanking away at a dead weight, all sense of time flies out of the window.
As we left, I heard the unmistakeable crack as a smouldering ember, attacked a piece of wood, this time, as a flame.
“We have to get that kit out if we can!” I hollered at him. It was just as well that the Germans had been alerted to our presence now, otherwise our element of surprise really would have been well and truly forfeited.
We thumped our way back in and began flinging kit all over the place, something that with hindsight probably isn’t advisable when the majority of kit was volatile and could explode in your face. I threw boxes of grenades, Bren gun magazines and medical kit, out towards the sapper, before he launched it towards the relative safety of the greenery of Northern France. Quite quickly, the flame began to take hold, first attacking the plethora of smoke that occupied the cabin, before working its way over to have a go at my breathing abilities.
I withdrew from the glider, hoping that we had managed to rid the Horsa of kit and personnel as best we could.
There was little time to get my breath back, never mind contemplate what we had just done. Bent over at the knees, I coughed and retched as I fought against the smoke that I could feel churning around in my lungs, as I felt my haversack slap me in the side of the head.
“Come on, Sir, we better get a move on. There's a party on over there.”
Partially scoffing at his sarcasm, partially choking on the lack of air that I needed to breathe, I grabbed the PHE from his grasp and threw it back over my shoulder, taking my rifle from its resting place next to the tree.
“Come on then, sapper, lead the way.”
He looked delighted that I had asked him to take the lead, even if it was because my lungs probably wouldn’t last much more than a hundred yards or so before collapsing in on themselves.
I would give it a go anyway, and with one final retch to try and clear the airways, we began charging towards the battery. It was our time to take the fight to the enemy.
18
With every footstep that I took, I felt as if my legs would give way under the sheer amount of kit that I seemed to have strapped to every part of my body. It threatened to lift me off the ground with every pace that I took forward, but then the momentum it gained from the gravitational pull towards earth, felt like I was going to go down with it. Each step thumped itself into the ground with a resounding thud, accompanied by a clink as my kit threw itself all over the place. If it wasn't for the sickness and tiredness, the thumping and rhythmic clinking of my kit would have filled me with confidence, an orchestral drum beat, leading me into battle. For a moment I wondered what it would have been like to fight Napoleon, going into battle with an actual drum beat to guide you in, but my thoughts were quickly hijacked by the vomit that spewed itself in every direction.
It had only been a few seconds ago, but the choking smoke had played havoc with my breathing, and sprinting towards death with my body weight in extra kit strapped to me, probably wouldn’t have been given out as sound advice by any kind of doctor. I let the vomit spray out of me, but I couldn’t stop running, if anything, I was lighter now, and I would be able to run much faster. I hammered one leg down in front of the other, and the threat of a buckling kneecap didn’t seem nearly as strong as it had done five seconds before.
I lifted my sleeve to my mouth to wipe the remnants away, especially as now the debris was being sucked back into the vortex that was my mouth as I continued to repay the debt of oxygen that I still endured.
Sapper Taylor, streaks ahead of me, thankfully, hadn't noticed my bile, and I suddenly became quite concerned about what he might have thought of me had he seen it. An experienced NCO throwing up as he ran to battle? That would have been enough to put even Richard the Lionheart off from his heroics. He carried on up ahead, never breaking more than a ten-pace lead on me, throwing his arms around as he pushed himself closer and closer to the battery, closer to the rest of his comrades. His Sten gun would disappear momentarily behind the mountainous stature he possessed, before poking its way out of his right-hand side as his hand continued to hold on to it as if his life depended on it. In a few moments, there was every chance that it might.
He had never been in combat before, he had told me a few days into our training together, during one of our glider landings. He didn't tell me out of a fear or out of disappointment, but out of a genuine delight, a desire to be able to do something, anything to say that he had contributed to the end of the war. So much so, that he had volunteered for the airborne division of the Royal Engineers so that he might see some action sooner, and something more varied than just repairing bridges that had been blown up hours before. I wondered momentarily if falling out of the sky in a wooden box, before leading an aging Company Sergeant Major, who had just thrown up, into battle, had been his idea of helping to shorten the war. I made a mental note to never ask him, and keep that one to myself.
I felt like taking a quick glance backwards, just to make sure that the boys that we had just left behind, one or two of them still unconscious, but on the safe side of the glider, hadn’t just seen that I’d vomited up my last meal. I hoped eagerly that it was as a result of the smoke attacking my lungs that I had decided to splash myself with my internal liquids, and not the fact that I was downright scared about heading towards the battery.
The skyline seemed to be continuously erupting, like a phenomenal electric thunderstorm, as each rolling wave of lighting tried earnes
tly to catch up with the last. The result was staggering, the darkness of the countryside was lit up for seconds at a time, with no other aid apart from the muzzle flashes and explosives detonating all around. It was then that I pushed the others from the glider from my mind, as I was getting closer to my destination, it was more and more important to make sure that I was staying on task, keeping my mind like a tunnel, no bends or deviations down which I could be distracted anymore. They had their own job to do, they knew exactly what they were meant to be doing, and I was confident that they would carry it out to the best of their ability. Even though some of them were taking longer to come round than they should have been.
Up ahead, it seemed as if the flashes and the lightning of the firefight were dimming slightly, only to be replaced by the intense noises of the engagement. The first time you hear a bullet fired in anger at another person, it sounds like someone has furiously put their knee through the branch of a tree, and you focus on that snap for what feels like an eternity. Before too long though, you realise it wasn’t someone stepping on a dried twig, or even someone snapping their fingers, but it is a bullet, a live round, cutting its way through the air towards you. They never seem solitary, in my experience, one bullet is always followed by at least one more. You just don’t know when it’s going to come. It could be seconds, it could be minutes, but until you kill the man behind the trigger of that first round, they will always keep coming.
The continuous snapping of branches and twigs that was clicking away in front of me, drew me in, called my name almost and I felt an affinity with it, like I was back where I was supposed to be. I felt like I was superhuman, invincible almost, as I recalled the last time I had seen the faces of Harfield, Vidler, Carter and Knight; fear and resignation the common theme with them all. I was here for a reason, but in those few seconds of making my way to the target, it was difficult to differentiate what they were, at first it was to bring down a fury and anger upon the enemy in retaliation for making those boys so scared and distressed back in ’40. Then it was to make sure that Harry would get back alive, that he would be able to live with his father again and go on to have a meaningful and satisfactory life. But then, and the weirdest one of all, it was out of a sense of pride, or even, an actual willingness to get home, and that was something I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Ever since I had been made an NCO, a Corporal in India, my wellbeing and welfare, would come second to the boys underneath me, so much so, that I rarely gave it any thought. But just then, for a fleeting moment, I had put myself above everyone else, and I desperately wanted to make it home. I’m sure my wife would have been pleased with me for once.
As the repeated gunfire drew me in, I thought of my first kill. I had been in small skirmishes before this war began but I had never actually knowingly killed a man before. It wasn’t until the retreat started that I had found myself in a position of having to kill, it was a thrill that I had never quite got used to, the mixture of elation and celebration with an utter contempt for yourself and total despair.
It was while we were taking a rest one night on the retreat, and it was my turn on watch. I kept an eye on the younger lads and forced one or two of their heads down into the ground in order to get them to sleep. It was a tough task, the mattress of the forest floor was not the most desirable bedding to have, but after eighteen hours of constant walking, I was sure it was a break that they would all appreciate, I would have to wait to get my shut eye.
As I looked at my watch for the fifth time, the second hand staying exactly where it had been in the last two days, I heard a rustle up ahead. Pulling my rifle up into the aim, I kept both eyes open, trying to force my eyeballs in opposite directions in order to get a better view of the situation. I tilted my head slightly, part of me wishing that there was someone out there, just to confirm that I hadn’t lost my mind.
It rustled again, this time, a shadow passed just in front of me as he blocked the light of the moon. I waited for a moment, not daring to move, not even to kick one of the boys out of their slumber.
“Haben sie Feuer?”
I let a few more moments pass as I watched the cigarette lighter flicker on, before being raised to the man’s face. The first man let his companion take a few puffs on his cigarette before flicking the lighter off and presumably making to place it back in his pocket. As he withdrew from the man, I caught the sight of the Reichsadler, the Imperial Eagle that the Germans had outstretched above the breast pocket.
I allowed my eyes a few seconds of adjustment, before aiming at the two silhouettes just ahead of me, and blasted them with two rounds each of my finest bolt action shooting, quicker than they were able to react by getting into cover and better still, before they could return fire. And that was it.
I had barely seen their faces, and I hadn’t even given them the chance to move on or surrender, just pop-pop, pop-pop, and they were gone. Two families had just been destroyed in a matter of seconds. I knew there and then that there was no pill, no amount of medication that would be able to wipe this memory from my mind, it was there indelibly, until some other lucky bloke managed to embed a round in my skull.
It was the eruption of gunfire from directly behind me that yanked me from my latest wanderings. The sapper in front of me screeched to a halt, my reactions taking slightly longer to kick in, causing me to come within inches of crashing into him.
We both spun round, and dropped to one knee. After half a second, he sidled up beside me.
“What was that?”
My response was interrupted by another, prolonged burst of gunfire.
“German machine gun. Must have made its way to the crash site.”
I pushed off the ball of my foot and stood upright once more.
“Come on,” I declared, like a Roman general, “we’ve got to keep going.”
He looked at me for a moment in disbelief, before seemingly coming round to the same thoughts that I had just done. They had magazines and weapons of their own, they had to do their own thing. There was nothing that we could do for them now.
As I continued on towards the battery, the return of gunfire made me breathe a relative sigh of relief. That was at least a few more lives that I wouldn’t have directly on my conscience.
19
We continued running for as long as we both could, my legs feeling like a jelly that hadn't properly set yet. I carried on for much longer than I physically could, not really wanting to lose face in the company of such a young soldier, he had to at least have the impression that I was as good, if not better than him. Our running slowly morphed into a jog which, in turn, found itself to be nothing more than a fast walk. Despite our tiredness, we were not uncomfortable, due, in no small part to the CO of the division, known as ‘Speedy’, who had sent us on thousands of speed marches and runs, which seemed to be justified, despite all the swearing and personal attacks we had given him at the time.
As we neared the RV, I began to hear the distinct noise of a duck, the noise just drifting out slowly, every ninety seconds or so, from a couple of hundred yards away. Raising our weapons, we both approached, cautiously.
“What time do you call this!” Came a harsh, aggressive whisper, “And where's the rest of you?”
“Over 'ere, mate, in the ditch,” another, more compassionate voice called out. Their accents were unusual, different from the variety of accents that I had become accustomed to after being thrown together with a whole load of boys from all over the country. We had stumbled upon the Canadians, who were covering our run into the battery, and then providing more covering fire if we needed it, on the way out.
“What they firing at over there? Up at the battery?” It had begun to puzzle me for a while, especially now I was even closer to the frontline.
“Think it was the diversion mate, covering your backside while you were dropping in! I’m Corporal Mallion, by the way.”
“Company Sergeant Major Baker.”
“Anyway, once you two have finished telling each other
your life stories, you better get up to the battery, they've just left.” The ruder corporal of the two was rapidly making his way to the top of my disliked soldier list, second only to the irritating glider pilot.
We stopped for a moment, to get our breath back and I perched myself on the rapid incline that formed one side of some sort of irrigation ditch, and I had to resist the urge to use it as a vertical bed for a moment or two. To distract myself from my sudden tiredness, I pulled out my canteen and necked a good few gulps of water, not knowing whether I would get the chance to have another couple of sips for another few hours, it's always best to get some down your neck as soon as you're able.
“You got the charges?” I couldn’t see his face, his head blocked out the light of the moon and all I got was a darkened silhouette, but by the way that he spoke, I had to assume he was in charge here.
“Yes, sir,” came my feeble-in-comparison reply, “I think our glider party may have been engaged back there, sir.”
He pondered my speech for a moment, before turning as if he was heading back down the line but stopped, like he had forgotten why he had turned in the first place.
“Would you like some brandy?” he asked, “I'm having some brandy now.”
As I threw the liquid down my neck, letting it fester in my stomach and dilute itself in the reservoir of water I had just downed, he spoke again.
“You two should move out, pretty sharpish. It's going to get loud any second now, they didn’t have nearly enough men.”
It hardly filled me with the greatest confidence, but he refused to give me the time to make any sort of protest or offer up any of my own suggestions; by the time I had taken a breath to talk, he had leapt off down the line.
“Did you see how many they had, lad?” I turned my whole body over to one side and came face to face with a young paratrooper.
“Probably only around a hundred so far, Sir. The boss held off for as long as possible.”