by Thomas Wood
The crack was followed by the sobering thud as a bullet penetrated human flesh, tearing through the body’s insides.
“Sniper!” several voices chorused as a volley of rounds kicked off from upstairs as well as a few token rounds from the boys in the very room we were in. After a few seconds of intense activity, everything fell silent once more.
“Did we get him?” someone called out, met with varying mutters of agreement and disagreement. Even those who were convinced the sniper had been dispatched still kept their eyes focused on the field, and their weapons trained on an invisible enemy.
There had been no heroic death for Private Charlie Evans. He was now lying motionless on the floor, exactly how he had fallen as the round that had cut his life short had propelled him away from his window. A few yards away, his rifle lay solemnly on its side, now without an owner to make use of it.
His head had lolled over to the right, so that he was staring at me, his fine blonde hair, that had wistfully swayed in the breeze, now collecting scarlet drops and interrupting their journey to the floorboards.
As I scrabbled my way over to him, his face looked almost normal, he could have quite easily have been sleeping if someone had just walked into the room. There was just one distinguishing mark that he had that no one else in the room had, a small, claret crater that was permanently embedded in his forehead, just above his right eyebrow.
As I lifted his head, a thick pool of scarlet liquid had oozed from the back of his head almost immediately and had begun to seep through the floorboards.
“Movement left flank,” wafted a calm voice.
“Same over here on our right,” returned another.
Within a matter of seconds, Evans had been forgotten.
18
I watched with a curious intensity, as did everyone, following the movements of the two figures on either side of the farmhouse as they approached and began sweeping around the outskirts of the field.
They moved swiftly, but elegantly, never seeming to want to bend even a daisy out of place. I had no idea what they were doing, but they struck me as individuals who knew exactly what to do, like they had been here before. They had snuck up on us somehow and were now well within our effective firing range and we hadn’t noticed their approach at all. Maybe the whole escapade with the sniper had all been a ploy to enable them to sneak up undetected.
If that was the case, then I felt even worse for Evans if he had died just to get us to let our guard down and leave us exposed to the enemy.
“Check the rear, now.” Called out the Captain, as two men, grabbing their rifles, scurried down the stairs faster than a rat being chased from the kitchen. The four figures on either side continued to slyly waft around, sometimes getting in nice and close to us before backing off slightly.
“Are they civilians?”
“No Sir, definitely Germans.”
“Yeah, I can make out their insignia on their uniforms. Definitely enemy soldiers Sir.”
I followed them closely, watching them through the sights on my rifle, when suddenly, one of them launched himself forward, and I felt a whole load of us twitch and take up a position on our triggers.
“No…hold your fire. Hold your fire. They’re not even armed, don’t worry.”
“What do we do then Sir?” squealed an incensed private, “Invite them in?”
“Calm down Hamilton,” the Captain uttered, reassuringly.
I hadn’t noticed Sergeant Lambert standing in the far corner of the room, until he spoke.
“They are unarmed Sir,” he said, lowering and passing the Captain’s binoculars back to him, “I think they’re a scouting party. They’re checking our arcs of fire. An attack will be coming soon.”
Captain Owens and Sergeant Lambert then enjoyed an open discussion in front of us all about whether or not we should allow them to retreat back to their company, or whether we should take them out before they got there.
The Captain decided that if we were to hold our fire, they wouldn’t be able to determine our arcs and therefore wouldn’t be able to plan for an attack properly. He also argued that holding off would mean we conserved ammunition, and that we didn’t run the risk of just injuring the poor souls who had been put forward for this job.
Regardless, those few moments as they scanned our frontline, was one of the weirdest experiences of my whole time in France. We could see their faces, we would have been able to speak to them if we had wished and they would have been able to see each and every one of us had they wanted to. If there had been no war on, if they had been on the same side, then there would have been no hesitation in inviting them in for a drink and a bite to eat. But, alas, although they were just regular men, they were the enemy, so to look at them away from the iron sights of a rifle was considered a mortal sin and something that I kept contained to the inner speech in my head.
The silence that appeared to linger just above our heads seemed almost deadly. It seemed to cling to my skin and tug at my insides, like a poison it held me in the palm of its hand. I could feel the silence beginning to gnaw away at my mind, starting to narrow my thoughts until all I could think about was the burning sensation of the silence.
I felt it surge around my body through my blood and felt it begin to paralyse me as it seeped into my brain. Because of the silence, I was paralyzed.
All I could do was pray that the attack wasn’t coming in the next ten minutes or so, as there would be no way that I would be able to fight. I didn’t have the desire to fight, I couldn’t bear to even look at my rifle. The only thing I could look at, was the field.
I needed to snap out of the trance that I was in. I shot a quick look over to Red and wondered if he was feeling the same. He blinked profusely as he gazed out over the field, as someone does when they are aware someone else is looking at them. But he didn’t move his head, not even for half a second. I was certain that he was crippled by the same paralysing fear of what was to come.
We knew it was coming. We knew that by the fact they were waiting, and that they had sent a group of scouts out, they knew what they would be facing. We knew they were confident. On the other hand, we were here, struck dumb with fear, completely at the mercy of the silence. We had no confidence, we had no motivation and more importantly, we had little ammunition.
No one spoke. Ever since the Captain had instructed us to simply observe the scouts that had free rein over the field, no one had really said anything at all. The silence that had descended over the farm was total, no one could find their voice now and I doubted if I would even recognise one if I heard it. There was no coughing, no clinking of kit as people moved around or fidgeted, there was a perfect silence.
I could hear the grass moving as it gently swayed in the breeze. I had never noticed that grass had made a noise until now, when the breeze was interrupted by the sprouting undergrowth and the knocking together of the blades.
It was then that I noticed the birds, that there were none. They must have all migrated at the first sound of gunfire, the natural instinct within me wanting to do exactly the same. I longed to be with them, to have some sort of natural consistency that I would be able to focus on, instead of the field littered with bodies and the corpse of Evans just a short walk away from me.
All of a sudden, it felt as if my world was going to collapse as a voice demolished the silence that I had slowly got used to. It took me a while to work out that it was a man’s voice, and longer still to work out what he was saying.
“Lieutenant Lewis. Over here please.”
Long after I had registered what the voice was saying, I still hadn’t worked out that I was Lieutenant Lewis, the one the voice was beckoning, and it was only after Red had given me a shove, that I eventually clambered to my feet and made for the calling voice.
“I’ve been thinking,” the Captain said as he stroked at his bunny hopping moustache, “that those scouts were potentially mapping out a route for armoured vehicles. What do you think?”
&n
bsp; I felt morosely idiotic that I had not thought of the possibility before and instead had let an infantry officer do the specialised thinking for me. Somewhat taken aback, I struggled to formulate a reply.
“It’s…it’s possible yes Sir.” He allowed me a few moments of silence to give it some thought and come up with something coherent for him to work with.
“There’s a chance that they were testing the terrain, trying out the field as it were, Sir. Making sure the tracks can get traction in the field and not get bogged down. It’s likely that they’ll want to move as fast as possible.”
“Right...right…” he muttered, with the young Lieutenant in front of him only confirming what he already knew rather than offering any sort of helpful insight.
“If they do come Sir, there would be no point in sacrificing so many lives, would there?”
“No, you’re quite right Lieutenant.”
We stood together for a few moments more, letting the silence descend once again in the room. As it did so, I looked out at all the men who were perched across the windows, all of them with a rifle peering outwards, none of them knowing what the next few hours, never mind days, would have in store for them.
“I have an idea, if I may, Sir.” He offered no objections which I took as permission to carry on with my plan.
“We allow them to come at us. All guns blazing, which we return in the best way possible. We won’t be able to hold them off for all that long so what we do is enough to push them back temporarily, then make a big song and dance of falling back, leaving only a handful of men behind. Those left behind then wait for the Germans to give chase, whereupon we try and take out as many of the pursuing forces as possible.”
I let it all sink in for a moment. “We will have to sacrifice those left behind Sir, but it should give the others a good chance of escaping.
“I don’t mind staying behind Sir.”
He stopped stroking his moustache for a moment before looking at me dead in the eyes, like he was trying to guess at my motivations for getting myself killed like this.
“Okay…” he weakly muttered, “Okay.”
Almost immediately, we began equipping our team that was to be left behind, extra rounds from the other men, as well as commandeering all grenades that could be found. If nothing else, we would be able to go down with a nice tidy bang.
I was raring to go now, a far cry from the paralytic fear of the silence that had a grip on me a little over an hour before. Now, I was doing something, something worthwhile, where I felt like I could be making a difference, this could be the fine line between someone getting back to Britain and not. I felt good.
The tables were turned, and I began to hope that it was the Germans who were now struck down with fear and that the men who had got so close earlier on had seen the whites of our eyes and known that we would not go down without a fight.
The Captain began to address the men, room by room.
“When the attack comes in, we’ll make a show of force and push them back. On my whistle we will retreat and make a big song and dance of it. All those told to stay behind, will come under Lieutenant Lewis’ control. Lieutenant.”
Picking up the baton, I continued the briefing. “After that, we’ll lure them in. They’ll undoubtedly go after the main bulk of us and so we will lie in wait until they are well into the courtyard. At which point we let them have everything we’ve got. Including grenades. First person to take out a tank gets a two-pound reward when we get home.” I got a few chuckles from a widely concerned group of faces.
“After that, I will blow my whistle and then…well…it’s every man for himself really. Good luck chaps.”
I was more buoyant than ever, so was the Captain, but that was probably more to do with the fact that he was going to have better prospects of getting home now than he did a few hours before. All we would have to do now, was wait, and it didn’t take too long for one of the men to spot movement in the treeline, the squeal of mechanized tracks slowly accompanying the swish of the breeze.
The Captain, lowering his binoculars and picking up his rifle that was resting on the wall, turned to me, open palm stretched out to me.
“Good luck, Alf. And thank you.”
I gripped his clammy palm for the last time as I made my weapon ready and took up my position, next to Red.
19
It did not take long for the Germans to make their presence felt. The mortars that had thrown explosives towards us before were forced into overload, doubling their output alongside the reinforcements and additional tubes they now must have had. It was a constant curtain of explosives that rained down on us heavier than a November downpour, as soon as three hit the ground, another three would be sending their ground-shaking tremors through the whole house.
All of a sudden, I felt quite weightless, like one does when you go swimming and all your mass seems to be removed by the up thrust of the water. I felt myself hit the ceiling before falling with a sobering crack back onto the floor of the farmhouse, and I felt quite lucky to not have been sent through the hole in the floor that was now precariously waiting to suck people in towards the kitchen below.
By the time I came round and pulled myself back up, the German advance was in full swing. They were using their armoured vehicles in much the same way as I would have done, three of them advancing slowly across the field, as a creeping barrage of mortars was kept consistent as they advanced, the infantry hiding behind the great behemoths that were looming towards us. Fortunately for us, they weren’t tanks, but some sort of half-track, a vehicle with reinforced wheels at the front, but with tank tracks to the rear of the vehicle, usually used for pulling heavy artillery or anti-aircraft guns. Today, they were basically being used as a battering ram, something that the fragile men could hide behind, before fanning out and really getting stuck in to us.
I assumed that the half-tracks would stop just short of the farm and let the infantry take care of everything, until the farm was secure, before parking up somewhere on the farm. They were too valuable and not well enough protected to take into the heat of a battle. I marvelled at them for a while, as I struggled to regain the delight of hearing, but was sickened to the very pit of my stomach when I watched as they trundled over their dead trivially, not even attempting to negotiate around them. I readjusted my eyes, looking for the first man that I had put away before, only to discover that he was no longer above ground, but now more of an imprint in the field where he once lay.
I couldn’t believe their barbarity and began immediately firing off round after round from my rifle in anger, the Enfield kicking and bucking around like a furious donkey, trying to get someone off his back. It pummelled into my shoulder again and again, as I went through the repetitive motions of pulling the bolt backwards, letting the round out and forcing it back forwards again. I carried on until I had no rounds left, at which point I threw myself on the ground to reload.
I noticed that four or five others were doing the same, but not to reload. They had taken rounds to the head, to the neck or to the chest, they were no longer moving. No longer breathing, they were dead. I felt nothing for them and my thoughts went out to them for no longer than it took me to push another charger clip into my rifle, before I was back up at the window, aiming at the figures that were now fanning out expertly, threatening to overrun us and enter the courtyard.
I aimed at one body and squeezed the trigger, then I moved onto the next. I wasn’t shooting to kill these men, I was shooting to wound, to disable them. If I could inflict damage on them just so that they would be out of the front line long enough to give me a chance of escaping, then I had done my job. If I was shooting to kill them, then I knew that a replacement would soon be sent out from the fatherland and simply take his place in the line of cannon fodder, in much the same way that Britannia was calling her troops up on a daily basis.
In situations such as these, you shoot to wound, to stop them from running at you, it’s just unfortunate, in war, that
death happens, it is more of a side effect of battle. I felt nothing as I watched man after man go down now, I had been trained to do this, it was my job to make sure I stopped the German army in their advance across the continent. If they hadn’t wanted to be killed, they should have stayed inside their own borders, this was all self-inflicted.
It was then that I realised what a stone-cold killer I had become, firing round after round, aiming for the man’s heart if I possibly could, or alternatively just aiming to stick a round in his upper leg to stop him from running. Still, I felt nothing even when I realised this fact and I soon found myself rummaging around in the pockets of my own dead, just to pinch an extra five rounds here and there. I was running through my rounds much quicker than I had ever anticipated and it was likely that I would be stuck in this farmhouse for a lot longer than the others here.
For the first time in what felt like hours, I heard a voice, screaming out over the din of rifle cracks and mortar rounds.
“Alf! They’re regrouping behind that half-track! Now is our time!”
“Go for it Sir! Now!”
He gave me a quick nod and blew hard on his whistle; three short, sharp blasts that echoed throughout the farm.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” I screamed at all those who had volunteered to stay with me, “Quiet.”
The gunfire raged on outside as the Captain and his men made as much noise and made it as obvious as possible that they were retreating into the woods.
As the noise of war died down considerably, I realised how loud my own breathing was and quickly put a stop to it. There were three other survivors in the room I was in, when there should have been seven. I had no idea how many were left standing in the barn area, if there were any at all. I had to assume that us four was all we had and anyone else that decided to pop their heads out was a bonus. Accordingly, we split the ammo between us and dished out grenades each.