by Thomas Wood
Maybe they would never talk about it, maybe just the silent acknowledgement that life would never be the same again for either of them would be enough, the knowledge that one another had seen things, done things, that any normal person on the Home Front, would never understand, never even, imagine.
So many bodies were now scattered all over the ground, that I found it strange to even imagine what it would look like without them. It was as if they were part of the landscape now, part of France, and I couldn’t picture what the whole place would look like once this party was over. Maybe, in a few years, people would make the pilgrimage here, to look at where so many heroes fell, without thinking for a moment of the suffering and pain that they went through, what their families would go through for years afterwards.
The bodies had become so common in my mind, that I barely looked at most of them, staring only at them as if they were an annoyance, a hazard that was there that would trip me up and send me crashing to the ground. They weren’t people anymore, they were objects.
One body caught my eye as I cannoned towards it, the flash of a red armband on one arm catching my attention, and holding it as I flew forwards. As I got closer, the shape sharpened, and I could make out more details. It was definitely a medic lying there, definitely one that had recently been working on a bloodied patient, his hands stained red.
It didn’t take me long to reach him, and as I skidded to a halt, throwing up some of the recently redistributed earth, my breathing faltered as I tried to get more oxygen into my body. I felt sick as my breathing got more and more sporadic, a mixture of grief and tiredness getting the better of my ability to breathe.
As I stared at him, the first doubts began to creep into my mind. If I hadn’t insisted on dragging the Captain, if I had been with him when he ran, would he still be alive?
I looked at the lifeless body of Harry Walsh, and wondered if there would ever be a point in my life again where I felt like I had succeeded, like I had completed something that I had set out to do. I had failed here, where it mattered most, an instance of life or death, and in that moment, my mind did not allow me to see past my failure, how I had let Harry down.
A trickle of blood began to drip down his face, as I pulled him up towards me, resting him on my knees. I felt like I would be lost in this maze of hatred forever, I would always be a symbol of failure to myself and that I would never break out of it, never see the light again.
I was empty once more, consumed by the darkness that had been lurking in my soul, ever since 1940, chipping away at my ability to feel, my ability to soldier even my ability to think of a future. I was convinced now that I would never have one, even if I was to survive this war, I would not survive myself.
The blood began to falter, as it tried to make its way over the dirt. He had a gash on his head, just above his eyebrow, but under the rim of his helmet, so that it was plainly visible to me. The rest of his face was caked in mud, not the cam cream that he had smeared over himself, but a drier, more distinctive look of earth, plastered to his face.
His mouth was hanging open, rather limply, almost like he had gone to yawn but had never quite got enough energy to follow through with the action, stuck in a frozen position, not closed, but not fully open either. It took me a while to realise that from this half-opened mouth, I was feeling the coolness of his breath as he began to expel the air from his lungs, interrupted momentarily as he drew breath once again, weakly, faintly. I put my ears to his lips and listened, hard, I didn’t want to get this wrong. If he was dead, I would have to leave him, but if there was the smallest chance that he was still alive, I would have to stay with him.
His breathing was weak, almost non-existent, but the fact that it was existent, was enough for me. I pulled my head back, so as to get a proper look at his face, not really knowing what the next stage was, did I shake him to wake him up? Or did I just leave him to wake up of his own accord? But how long would that take?
I didn’t have to wait long for an answer however, as I began to make out movement, behind his eyelids, like he was experiencing a very real, vivid dream, his eyes darting around as if they would have done had he been awake and conscious.
Suddenly, with a gasp, his eyes shot open, and the bright white pigment burned brightly against the contrasting darkness of his skin. His eyes shone like a beacon in the darkness, and it made me think briefly of the beacons used to warn the English of the approaching Spanish Armada, in turn making me consciously warn myself that a German counter attack in the next few moments, was both entirely possible and also inevitable.
I felt like giving him a good slap and making him realise how he had made me feel in those few short moments where he had appeared dead, but the elation that bubbled up inside me suppressed my feelings of frustration. Outwardly, I restricted myself to a short, “Well, thank goodness for that,” before trying to gee him up to sit up, and hopefully, stand.
“Any pain anywhere?”
“Just my head,” he replied, groggily.
“That’s good,” I responded, “You’ve only got a slight gash there, that’ll be what’s causing the pain, come on, no more heroics.”
I got a confused smile in return from him, which was followed by almost pure obedience. He began to stumble about, like a young foal, trying to find his feet, but within a few seconds, he was ready to move.
“Come on then, lad.”
I was almost chipper about the whole situation, for a moment, I thought I had lost everything that I cared about, the only reason that I was here, but now, I had everything back, he was listening to me and I felt in control of the situation once more.
I heard him stop for a moment, before retching and spewing out a pathetic, weak mixture of water and what must have been baked beans onto the ground. He finished up, spitting and wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve.
“Better?” I asked, almost laughing at him.
“Where are we actually going?”
That was when it clicked. He wasn’t okay, he was concussed. The unsteadiness on his feet, the confused look in his eye plus the forgetfulness were all signs that the head injury wasn’t as superficial as I had hoped.
“We’re off to the Calvary lad, you remember?”
“Yes, yes…of course…” he lied.
I pulled him towards me, so that I was no longer leading the way, but we were running, side by side, so I could keep an eye on him, and we began bashing into each other as I used my bodyweight to steer him, rather than having me as his guide.
I was certain that he was going to be alright, but he was going to need a bit more of a close eye than what he was used to, certainly for the next few minutes at least.
It felt good to suddenly have him by my side, gripping his arm from time to time and feeling that physical connection, that sense that I was physically in control of him for once. If anything happened to him now, it really would be all my fault.
Even though I felt good as we sped our way towards the RV, I still felt the churning of the darkness, deep within me, in the pit of my stomach. It seemed further away now, not as restrictive as it had felt a moment ago, but it was still there, ready for my moment of weakness, when it would pounce, surrounding me from every side until I had no other option but to allow my mind to be consumed by it.
I tried to keep as tight a lid on it for the next few minutes as was possible, I didn’t want anything to get in the way of us, and the relative safety of Calvary.
26
I was in a bad way, my mind was all over the place, like it didn’t exactly belong in my body anymore, almost as if now that this unknown side to my psyche had been opened up to me, that I didn’t want to be here anymore. I was trying with every fibre of my being, every ounce of energy that I could muster from anywhere, to suppress the feelings of guilt and despondency that suddenly overwhelmed me. But it didn’t feel like they would be leaving me, not soon enough anyway.
I knew that I was now in a very dangerous position. Apart from the conti
nuous thumps of mortars as they rained down on us like an autumnal downpour back in Britain, the weapon that was my mind was coming perilously close to dragging me down. Sometimes you see it with soldiers, in others you don’t, but that sense of losing everything that you once held dear, losing the very reason for why you were fighting, was enough to get you killed. It made you do stupid things.
I had seen it before, in France, back in 1940. A young private, a Scotsman by the name of Kerr, had received a letter from his girlfriend while we were away, part of the so called Phoney War, towards the end of April. She had found someone else, someone who was not yet in the army, so could give her the stability and the attention that she craved. Kerr went into himself, and became prone to sudden outbursts of violence that once landed him in the cells of a local French police station, rescued only by the CO’s excellent French, and a nice bottle of brandy that he had acquired some weeks before. When the Germans had taken all of us by surprise, our call to arms was met, by most, with level-headedness and a sense of duty, some may even call it a willingness, to fight. But not Kerr. He didn’t possess a level-headedness, nor did he even have a willingness to fight. He bubbled over with rage, a pure aggression so fierce that, you could almost see it bursting from the vein at the side of his head that became so prominent that it stayed there, poking out of the surface of his skin.
He did not have the desire to fight, but to brawl, one or two claiming that he would simply ‘butcher’ the enemy if he laid eyes on them, blaming them for this war and so, by association, blaming them for losing his girlfriend to some “stuck up, low-life coward.”
The deep depression that a soldier can get in, can make you do some very stupid things, and are often masked as bravery or courage. Kerr and a few others, found their withdrawal route hindered by the machine gun fire that was forcing to keep their heads down, behind an upturned vegetable cart in the middle of a French village. Waiting for the machine gun to reload, Kerr drew his bayonet, and charged to the water fountain that occupied the centre of the village square. The Germans must have thought they had killed him as he stumbled behind the fountain, as they redirected their fire once again, towards the remaining British soldiers, only for Kerr to burst from cover once again, taking them by total surprise.
After a scuffle, the two-man machine gun crew landed up with around twenty bayonet wounds each, mainly centred around their chest and neck areas. Kerr was covered, head to toe in blood, mostly the Germans’, but also, partly his, as one of the gunners had gone for his pistol, and managed to bury a 9mm round from a Luger into his gut. Kerr died, and he died slowly and in pain. His death was completely avoidable, not by making his girl stay with him, but by keeping his head, making sure his mind was in check before suicidally, with an element of heroism chucked in, throwing himself at a German machine gun.
It was something that I was very conscious about and I knew that my mind was around the same place as Kerr’s was some four years ago. I needed to make sure that I double checked every little thing that I did, from stepping out from cover, to putting more rounds in my rifle. Was I going to get myself killed doing this? Could I get around this another way?
I was here, in the middle of all this chaos and confusion to protect my mind. I was here to protect Harry, to make me feel like I was doing something useful, something commendable. I had staggered through this war so far, killing people, maiming some, but now, I needed to do something to keep my sanity, to give myself something to fight for. Some people reasoned their rationale for fighting simply as for their family, but I needed something more obvious than that, something far more urgent than that when a thousand weapons are pointed at your head. Harry was that reason.
I was here to try and settle my mind, so that I could go home, look people in the eye and tell them what I had done, with a little hint of pride thrown in that one boy was still living as a result of my actions. But the more that time went on, I realised this was having the opposite effect. All I could do, all I could think about, was the all-consuming darkness that had now taken residence within me. Being here was making me feel worse.
I had begun to think that Harry hadn’t been concussed after all because, after what seemed like only a few moments, his condition had improved greatly. He knew where we going now anyway, even if he did have to keep repeating it to himself as we moved. We still ran side by side, as if he still needed me as his guide; I was sure he knew exactly where to go, and his pace was no doubt much faster than mine, so I had no idea why he slowed it down so much as to be with me.
Perhaps he had felt a sense of duty to get me home, to my wife and my family, so that none of them would live the rest of their lives with nothing but hatred and gloom at the thought of this wretched war. It would be nice if their sadness as they thought of the war was mixed with the slightest tinge of happiness, at recalling the day that I returned home, after disembarking the ship that had carried me to safety. It would be so nice to make it home.
Harry’s condition had improved somewhat, but he still either had a slight concussion, as he failed to see the immediate dangers of the situation, or he had a sheer disregard for the position we found ourselves in.
He began deviating from our escape route, no longer needing me as his guide, but I stayed at his side nonetheless. He began ripping at dressings, or dabbing at wounds as he began to tend to the injured once again. His treatment now was a lot shallower than before, limiting more to cleaning up the superficial wounds, before administering a shot of morphine before moving on. I wasn’t sure if this was down to a final appreciation of the situation, or if, more likely, he was running low on supplies.
I knelt down beside him at each casualty, raising my rifle so I could scan the perimeter of the battery, each time expecting to see the uniform of the Wehrmacht appearing in my sights, ready to force us all out of here for good. I watched in total astonishment as I saw Harry reach into the smock of a dead officer, and drew out an Enfield Mark Two service revolver, holding it expertly in his right hand. I had never seen him hold a weapon before, as he had refused to on the grounds of being a conscientious objector. As he got used to the weight in the palm of his hand, running his bloodstained thumb over the grooves in the pistol grip, I wondered if he would ever actually use it, or whether he would ever be likely to take a life.
As quickly as he had pulled the revolver from the jacket, he began marching over to a slit trench, where a few Germans sat, cowering in the bottom from their own mortars, smoking.
“You, you, you!” He screamed, making it perfectly clear who he was addressing by accusingly pointing the business end of the revolver in their faces.
“Drag our wounded over there, into your cover!”
I wasn’t sure if they spoke English or not, but when a weapon is being waved around in your face, you tend to speak most languages on the planet. They weren’t to know that he was a conchie, and I highly doubted if he would ever pull the trigger, even if the rage in him was so overwhelming that it was the only thing he could think of doing. But the Germans weren’t to know that, and Harry knew that too, so the confidence and aggression that he showed, had to be convincing enough to make them do as he told them.
Almost instantly, working as a team of three, they began dragging the wounded, the ones that were screaming out for help anyway, towards some cover. They sped along, two holding the upper body, while the third took the legs, and in less than a minute, had already taken two bodies over to where they had been cowering a few moments before.
Harry began trying to drag others into cover himself. With a frustrated roar, I pushed up from my observation position, and ran over to help him.
For what felt like the thousandth time tonight, I found myself going against everything that I had ever been taught to do. Running across open ground as enemy fire came down, all the while everyone else was making their way to the RV point.
27
The Germans did as Harry had instructed them until the mortars and shelling intensified to the point wh
ere even they were willing to risk Harry’s wrath, rather than be out in open ground. It was a case of fair enough on their part, because the explosions had gradually become more and more frequent, to the point where I was unwilling to risk myself being out here anymore.
The Germans really must be coming soon.
I found myself repeating the thought in my head, with no doubt in my mind anymore that the counter attack was inevitable. The explosions, which had started off as being one or two every thirty seconds, causing enough devastation themselves, had now intensified to two blasts every ten seconds or so, greatly slashing our odds of being the next ones to take a hit directly on top of us.
I had met survivors of several bomb blasts, some of them now on sticks to accompany the wooden leg that replaced the fleshy one that had been ripped off. Each one of them had strongly recommended that I avoid being blown up if I could avoid it, something that each of them had found raucously funny when they made such a suggestion. It wasn’t so much the instant death that I was scared of, it was the possibility of still being alive in those few seconds in the air, giving me time to think about what my life could have been. If I was to die, I wanted it to be quick, none of this, “tell my wife I loved her” nonsense. I just wanted the whole saga to be done with.
Harry looked across at me at just the right moment, “Time to go?” He screamed, a broad smile sweeping across his face.
I didn’t have time to take in the stupid look on his face, or get annoyed at his joviality at such a situation, there was no time for anything apart from a hastily screamed, “Agreed!”