by Thomas Wood
That had been our firm base, the area that was being secured by the Canadians, so that if anything went wrong during the assault, we could fall back there to continue the fight. Fortunately, we hadn’t needed it, but now was for the next phase of our invasion.
“Gather up as many men as possible for us Baker, anyone that can still walk, we’ll need every man.”
As he turned to walk out, I blurted, “What do you mean by that?”
“Well,” he said turning back to me, bringing his face as close as possible to mine, lowering the volume as low as he could, “put it this way, we’ve lost half the men we started out with and I can’t imagine we started with many more than one-fifty, one-sixty men.”
He left me there, dumbstruck, as he gave me a nod of appreciation as he plonked his beret back on his head. He spun on his heel once again, spraying a mist of blood around as he did so, before mimicking a sort of jive with his right hand, cheerily declaring, “Next stop, La Plein!”
I had never been particularly good at maths, but I could quite easily work things out that were divisible by two. By the Captain’s estimations we had between seventy-five, to eighty men left standing and able to fight. So out of a battalion strength of six hundred men, we now only had eighty men left able to carry on.
How was this in any way heroic? How in any way was this fulfilling a duty? I had failed these boys, again, I had failed at what I was meant to do. The feeling was strange, a familiar feeling, but one that I found odd nonetheless. Even now, I do not know how to describe that feeling, how to get across how it truly felt, standing in that concrete box with men bleeding and dying all around me.
I wanted, longed to be able to smile, to laugh at the situation that I was in, to try and chase away the fear and gut-wrenching sadness that was racing through my mind. But there was something stopping me from doing that, and it made me fear that I would never experience happiness again in my lifetime, however short that may be. Every time I tried to laugh, something snatched hold of my heart, and squeezed it, until all that was left were a thousand tiny pieces. It felt like the flashlight that was on in my inside was slowly dying out, and that the brightness, the spark, was being quickly chased away, engulfed by the darkness, so all that was left was an emptiness.
I had to push it all away, let my mind wipe the feelings of despair and emptiness from my conscious, so that I could continue to focus on what was being asked of me, what was expected. But I was so tired, so tired of it all.
Our next objective was to head back to the Calvary, before making our way down the road that ran south, towards a village called Breville. We would wait there to formulate an attack plan, which, I assumed would be a mammoth task if we only had seventy odd men left standing. We would then advance on La Plein, a German stronghold and take their prized possession there, a large, French château. I hoped that there would be a large, four poster bed there for me to rest my knackered head on and to take the weight off my poor, ruined feet.
“Walsh, come on, we’ve got to move!”
“No…” he said looking at me, almost scoffing, “look at them all.”
“Exactly! There’s nothing you can do, c’mon, we’re leaving!”
“I am not leaving!”
I went to grab him from his position, aiming for the red cross that was on his arm, I clamped a hold on him, but he quickly fought me off.
“No! Sir…” he added regrettably at the end of his sudden outburst. “My job is to look after these men, yours is to be a soldier! You do your job and I’ll do mine!”
“You’re wrong!” I found myself screaming into his face, “My job is to try and keep idiots like you alive! These men have had it, we’re withdrawing and none of them can move, we need you at the next village!”
I didn’t feel like I was getting through to him at all, “Look,” I tried lowering my tone, going all paternal on him, “you’ve done a good job, honest you have, but this is war, some of these men have to die, and it’s the ones who are still walking that will need you now, they’re our best bet.”
His face softened slightly, it was working. I was surprisingly good at this. “They need to see a medic running around. They need to see someone that’s willing to help. It helps them fight.”
He didn’t say anything, but he dropped to his knees and carried on applying a bandage to a corporal’s upper arm. Once he had finished, he grabbed his satchel, and puffed his cheeks out, “All right then, you lead the way.”
The Captain must have been watching this debacle as I caught a glimpse of his back as he left the casement. It was at this moment that the unmistakeable sound of mortar rounds, colliding with the ground began to erupt all around us. People always ask me what it feels like when you can hear the round, whistling its way through the sky, getting closer and closer to you, before it explodes near you. The reality is completely different. A mortar round travels faster than the speed of sound, you don’t hear a whistle, the first thing you know about it, is the ground around you being turned to a fine dust, and you feel yourself floating through the air. There is no warning, no chance to launch yourself behind any solid cover.
The area was still littered with wounded soldiers, many of them were German, and we had a large number of prisoners under our control in the vicinity, which the Germans who were doing the shelling must have known by now. The idea that they were shelling their own men, seemed utterly deplorable to me, the friends of those lying here, were the ones who were pushing the rounds down the tube. I wondered if they felt any sense of remorse, or if they were just so hell bent on wiping the rest of our force out that they didn’t care who died alongside us.
There was no other option for us but to carry on, we had to leave the casement, the mortar rounds probably signified that a counter attack was on the way, but also, we didn’t want to be left behind by the main body of the battalion, even if there was so little of us that we would struggle to fill a double-decker.
I found myself jogging, just behind the Captain, trying to guess where the next round would land, as dirt and debris was sucked into my lungs as I ran through cloud after cloud of settling earth. I didn’t know for how long I would have to run, I couldn’t work out what the Germans had zeroed in on as their target. But all I knew was an overpowering sense of wanting to stay alive now, after making it to this point, all I wanted to do was keep breathing. With every pace that I took, my legs felt like a heavier block of lead, like they would drag me to the ground to wait for the explosion.
For a half second, I don’t know why, but I looked at the Captain running ahead of me, focusing on his back, aiming to catch up, like a sprinter totally focused on the finish line, except my finish line was moving further and further away every second.
Suddenly, the Captain rose up, and I could have sworn that I saw him clutch at the sides of his beret, like he was trying to keep it in place, as he shot backwards. I found myself lying flat on my back, and watched as his limp body came crashing back down to the earth.
When I managed to stagger to my feet, Harry was already over by his side, ripping away at his clothes to inspect the damage. He had a piece of shrapnel embedded in his groin, and a leaking wound in his stomach. Harry was immediately more concerned with the leg injury, and began tearing at the Captain’s trouser leg, while simultaneously blindly opening, and fumbling around in his medical kit.
“Walshy, come on, you’ll be killed out here!”
“You go, I can save this one!” It suddenly dawned on me that he had become a machine, that he was seeing each of his casualties, not as patients, but as things, and that nothing that I was going to say would stop him from tending to the Captain. I had no other option but to stay here, to guard him, or at least be with him, when he too, was hit by a mortar. I pulled at my bayonet, and started slashing away at his smock, pulling it apart as I weakened it, till all I was looking at was skin.
I took one look at the bloody mess before me and began to feel a change of heart coming on.
24
“No Walsh, this is not happening, we’re going!”
I made to get up and leave, like a conniving parent does, trying to force their child into following him, but Harry didn’t move.
“How many more times!” I screamed, hard enough to rip a few blood vessels in the back of my throat. “If you stay here, you’re putting more lives in danger, you know we have to go!”
He ignored me, his head down as if he was saying a silent prayer, focusing on the wounds that the Captain had become incapacitated by. I felt like one of the worst human beings in the world, I was displaying a coldness, a callous streak that I didn’t think I possessed, getting the one person who could save the Captain, to leave him, to die amongst the barrage of mortars that were still raining down all around us. I comforted myself briefly with the fleeting thought that what I was doing, was justified somehow, by trying to keep Harry alive. He was still my sole focus, my only reason for still being outside, instead of finding some decent cover.
“Move!” I hollered, becoming shocked at myself, as I found the barrel of my rifle, pointing directly at Harry’s chest. A round landed a bit too close, and I found myself head to head with Harry, leaning over the body of the Captain, preventing any falling debris from further injuring him, but also stopping any molten metal from blinding either of us.
Once the dust had settled, I found that my rage had not subsided, and the rifle resumed its threatening position, unwaveringly pointing at the centre of his torso.
“You’re not going to shoot me, Sir,” he uttered calmly as he began to work out how to patch up the Captain, “you’re here to keep me alive. No other reason for you to be here. I’ve known it all along.”
I wondered momentarily if he was talking about me being part of the invasion force, that I had no reasoning to be part of it all, which was true, I had been offered a training position a few months ago that meant I wouldn’t have to face the onslaught of bullets for at least another six months. I felt suddenly uneasy about the whole situation, had he known that I had turned it down so that I could keep an eye on him, did he know that I had done a bit of digging on his background and tried to find ways to get him transferred out, to a safer posting?
I settled myself with the idea that he merely meant being out here, with him, in amongst the flying mortars and the inevitable machine gun fire that would soon accompany the hollers of counter-attacking soldiers.
“The Captain here has no other family apart from his Dad too, that’s why I have to help him Sir, he ain’t like the other ones I’ve tried to treat.” He looked up from his patient for a moment, giving himself just enough time to utter, “He’s just like me, c’mon.”
The urge to explode at him, to tell him off like a naughty child and drag him to the nearest cover, disappeared as another mortar sprinkled us with a fine covering of dirt. The now irresistible urge, to stay and help, was one that infuriated me, going against everything I had been taught, and everything that I taught others. But I had no choice. This was important to Harry, so it was important to me.
The Captain’s skin was stained red already, and the flow of blood was made worse by his rapid, shallow breathing. I pulled a dressing from his smock pocket and ripped it open. I splashed away at the blood with my hand, trying to clear some so that I could make out where the actual wound was, in case I applied the dressing to a pool of blood rather than the actual bleed. I located a small hole in the well of blood, that was now gushing from his stomach. I pushed the dressing down on him hard, and kept it there, trying to fool the blood into thinking I was part of the skin.
It was only then that I realised his howling, like a werewolf screaming at a full moon, so I tried to calm him in my inadequate tones. I told him over and over about how it was going to be alright, while I watched Harry splashing away in the blood. Eventually he finished, and moved onto his stomach.
“Okay, we’re going to need to sit him up.”
I did as I was told and the howls intensified to the point that I thought my eardrums would burst. There was no exit wound, which was good for the short-term health of the Captain, as it meant that he only had two holes to bleed out of, instead of three. The risk of infection later on though, if he lived that far, was incredibly high.
Harry began applying another dressing, tying this one around his back, so tight that his stomach seemed to bulge from the pressure.
“Right then, that’s all we can do. You have just helped save a life CSM Baker.” I hadn’t done much, but I felt like I’d helped, I’d given the Captain at least half a chance of surviving, as long as he didn’t take a direct hit, he might not actually bleed out now. I felt good, like I had given this man a new lease of life. If I hadn’t been constantly reminded of a war by the falling bombs, I would have celebrated, commemorated this moment as one of the proudest of my life.
But elation and self-congratulation was cut short by Harry, “…but, we have to go now, don’t we?” He said reluctantly, looking up at me, like a kid who had just asked for something for his birthday, that was way out of what his parents could afford. I opened my mouth to speak, but it wasn’t my voice that was answering, it was a weak, almost forlorn crackle that spoke.
“Get to the Calvary, quickly…”
The Captain half-smiled as he spoke, revealing to us a mouth packed with blood, fused nicely with a sticky phlegm that he was trying to cough up and out of the way of his airways.
“Yeah…come on Harry, time to move. On three…” I gave him the countdown and watched as he got up, head bent forward as he made for the relative safety of a concrete bunker, clutching at his swinging medical kit as he surged forwards. Thankfully, he didn’t look back.
“Come on then, Sir, let’s get you moving, shall we?”
“What are you playing at Baker, leave me alone.”
“What, were you thinking of staying the night there sir? No way, there’s a nice little five-star hotel I know of just over here, you’ll love it.” My weak joke, got an even weaker laugh back from the Captain, as I started to drag him, holding onto his webbing and pulling with all my might, while he tried to push along with his good leg.
I felt like I was going to be sick as I heaved for what felt like the thousandth time, but the trail of blood that we had been leaving behind, like a macabre Hansel and Gretel, had indicated that we had only moved a number of metres, not quite halfway to the casement yet.
“You can’t leave me now Norm,” the Captain said as I released his weight to the ground for a moment, “I’ll have you court martialled if you do.” His joke was stronger than mine, but got only a weak acknowledgement, from himself and not from me. It had crossed my mind to leave him, I was putting myself at risk here, and for what?
What would he go on to do if I got him to safety? He would be shipped off home to recover and so had absolutely no operational use to us for at least a number of months, by which time the war would be over. He looked like he would lose his leg anyway and so would be out of the army quicker than a young soldier going to the NAAFI with his first pay check. He was of no real use to anyone now, he was as good as dead.
But he had no one, apart from his father. I wondered what had happened to his mother and whether he had had any brothers or sisters at some point, whether he had gone through some traumatic experience of losing his family members in a similar way to Harry. I thought of Harry’s father, a combat hardened, VC-winning veteran, reduced to tears if he was to learn of his only surviving family member, his only son even, having been killed by this merciless war. It was that image, that gave me strength, from somewhere, to lever the Captain up and onto my back, as I half ran, half stumbled towards safety.
A few, curious faces poked out at us as we staggered towards them, none of them was Harry.
“Get lost the lot of you! Get to the Calvary! Get to the Calvary!”
Some of them obeyed the mythical monster that came surging out of the mist, but others still stared, transfixed.
“They’ll be coming soon! The Ger
mans! They’re coming!” Their hypnosis was broken, and all of them, from what I could see in my hunched over position, broke out into a panic-stricken sprint as they made for the firm base near the Calvary.
“Go on, get lost,” came the voice that was strapped to my back, chuckling to himself as he said it, too quiet and timid to be heard amid all the clamour.
“They’re on their way, sir. Nearly there.” I grunted, struggling for breath by now.
“No, Baker…I mean you, get lost. If you leave it much longer, that’s you done for. Your luck’s running out mate.”
By the time my weary brain had contemplated his order, my legs, like automatons, had pulled us to the casement.
I threw him off my back and faced him.
“I’ll see you later, sir?”
“Sure, Norm, see you later. Thanks.”
As I turned my back on him, I heard the click of his revolver, as he checked how many rounds he had to spare.
A few men were bursting forwards, just ahead of me. Good, I thought, they won’t have left the muster point just yet then.
25
There was a strange irony to me running towards Calvary. It was not something that I had ever imagined I would do and yet, here I was, running towards it, as if my life depended on it. Which it did.
I do not know where I found the energy to charge like I did on that night, I had never run that fast in my life before, I have never done since, especially with the amount of kit that I still had on, clinging to every part of my body that seemed like it was able to bear some weight.
I may have got the energy from some unknown source, but my motivation continued to drive me forward, never waning in my desire to save Harry Walsh, to get him home to his Dad so that they could live in one another’s company for as long as was possible. I knew what it was like to return home, out of a combat zone, and try and find someone that understood, but it was impossible. It would be easier for them though, they would have each other and although they had fought in two, very different wars, the understanding would be the same. At least I hoped it would.