“Let’s move on then,” said the Corporal.
“Move on where Corp?” asked Cello. He appeared enthusiastic and engaged. Perhaps he was the new leader.
“Well, on your bearing.”
They turned away from each other, back towards an individual mental silence. Instead of single file they moved into a sort of line-abreast formation.
The bearing was difficult to follow. The sound of the casualty seemed to have disappeared. Suddenly they breasted a small earth bank and came into a shallow crater. A flash revealed water and something in the dancing shadows of the alternate light and dark. Perhaps it was movement.
“Something there?” The Corporal raised his voice a little wildly, questioning the unknown, the shadows. Of course there were bodies, lying in No Man’s Land, but this…something beyond death perhaps. So they stopped and crouched. The pool of water became a moon in the next flash, a source of light and on its far bank something did move. It may have been just rats, or one rat dragging something made big in the shadow.
Ben knew the stillness of death, having spent the day with the grey lumps in the trench next to him. This did not have the stillness of death. Then the moon disappeared.
It was a crater of some proportions, which would have made it difficult to have seen anything inside it from their trench, even with the periscope. But perhaps the helmet; the reflections of the false moon; anything was possible in the land between life and death that was No Man’s Land.
They paused and began silently to question what, beyond anything they could fathom, was here; sharing this space. A dread, beyond fear, rose in them, as the false moon faded to black and the night reclaimed the pit. They stared into it, a kind of hell. What lay there?
“Who are you?” Again the Corporal questioned in a voice high with a new emotion. The mouth usually comforted with a pipe could quiver easily.
No sound came, no answer.
A voice that had called for help would have had joy in the prospect of receiving it. But anything in this pit was long beyond joy. The patrol were loath to advance, loath to step into the water; yet to tiptoe around it was not the act of a soldier, at least not an upstanding one.
So it was Jack who took the first step. He was a leader. The Corporal was something of a reluctant one. His Corporal’s stripes could not be seen in the dark. The strength of personality was the test which raised up leaders in the darkness and uncertainty of the battlefield, whatever the content of their character or the badges on their arm. “Oh fuck this shit, let’s just get this over with.” With that Jack stepped forward.
The others were behind, the tall Cello was almost alongside Jack and as they splashed through the water, only ankle deep. On the other side of the pool a grey lump came up, a face turned upwards from the mud; a terrible face without half of its covering, a moving skull. A hand came up, perhaps pleading. But it was too late; firing from the hip, Jack shot the lump then reloaded another round into the chamber with a ratchetting of the cocking lever and fired again. The face subsided back into the mud without an accusation. The body, for it was obvious now that it had been a body, convulsed and was then still.
Cello saw the helmet; the British helmet. Something inside him was touched. His heart suddenly cried for him. He heard his own voice. “Why have you shot him? He moved. He was alive, one of ours. Why?”
They had all reached the other side of the pool of water. The bombardment was slowing, flashes of light were longer spaced. They dropped to one knee, rifles pointing.
One rifle did not point. Cello just held his rifle down, already it didn’t seem part of him.
They became still, on guard against the body, against the chance of it rising up against them. They now had to confirm the events that had happened in a moment of action. That moment; the shots fired, the noise they made; would create other consequences, perhaps for their safety. They might be attacked by a nearby patrol, from either side.
Rational action, reaction, consequences; such things were often impossible for a soldier. He had to live in an adrenalin moment.
How was he then to be judged or make a judgement?
They had bayonets fixed, seventeen inches of steel on their rifles. Moving at night in single file without stabbing the man in front was not easy. Rifles were often cradled in the crook of the left arm. Turning around might then be the cause of an accident. But now they had a chance for a long armed exploration of the lump in the mud.
They advanced very slowly. “Stick him then, just to make sure.” The Corporal had gone back to speaking in a high and quivering voice. But no one knew whether it was a ghastly joke he was making.
“Just prod ’im,” said Ben.
“He is or was a casualty, not an enemy,” Cello had seemed to grow in stature during the night. His voice was steady.
“Oh you know that do you, very know-all suddenly ain’t we, Mister Cello?”
“I’m not a know it all. But I do know what is right.”
All this was whispered. But then suddenly Jack broke into a laugh, a high forced laugh at the top of his breath. “Ha ha ha, oh right, what is right. You know what is right do you? This war is right is it? What we doing here is right is it?”
“We can choose to do what is right regardless of the situation we are in.”
The lump in the mud waited patiently for them to decide his fate. Before they had heard crying and pleading, now he lay motionless, silent, inviting anything. Seemingly angered by this, Jack advanced the few paces towards it and in a classic lunge and with an exasperated grunt stuck the bayonet into the middle and highest point. It was a quick in and out penetration, probably only a few inches. He did not want the embarrassment of the point being stuck inside the casualty’s body.
“Awww!” Cello reacted as though he had suffered the stabbing, diverting attention away from the lump which reacted as a felt-filled sack used for bayonet practice might have done. In his turn of anger, Cello cast down his rifle which before had hung listlessly from his hand.
“He is fucking dead. He is totally and completely dead, you silly fucker,” said Jack.
The others were incapable of speech or had nothing to say. They remained still.
“We best be getting back,” announced the Corporal after some time, as if they had gone out for an evening stroll in a dark wood and should now go back for their supper which would be getting cold.
They all paused, not knowing which way or where to turn. Then slowly stood up. But Cello, leaving his rifle where he had thrown it, approached the casualty and bent towards him. He put out a hand and very lightly touched the man who tipped and as if balancing on the edge of some moment of private endeavour, gave up and slowly turned over, settling into a more comfortable prone position in his mud bed. Cello almost jumped back. Then after a moment’s shocking stillness they all took half a pace forward and looked.
It was as if the mud had eaten the casualty. It had certainly drained the blood from his face which shone like the finest vellum paper crumpled over bone, with its dark sightless sockets of eyes seeking the moon above; not accusing them. Mud had engulfed at least two limbs. Where were they? What remained of the body was so small. But he had moved. Had he therefore been alive?
Then suddenly as if remotely taunting them, there came a low cry, more a gasp, surely from the same original casualty, not close, not within the arc of the patrol movement that had brought them here; but on the wind of a moon that did now suddenly present itself again. Had this mud man summoned it; the moon and the cry, as if they were comrades about to enter another life, or the afterlife.
Men often spoke of experiences of the void between life and death such as seeing and speaking to men who had been killed the day before. Some men would enter the realms of death instantly, accepting it. Some refused to go there even though the body they had inhabited had ceased to function.
The patrol just dropped their heads; as if a football match long overdue its final whistle had just yielded another goal against them. B
ut Cello lifted his head and turned it this way and that as if sniffing out the source of the sound. But they were not animals. Their powers were limited. They could not even bring to bear those they did have; of speech and movement. Only Cello did move. He stepped further away from his rifle, away from the apparition in the mud. “Well that gives you the answer doesn’t it on our casualty – he is still out there, out here.”
“Not for much longer he won’t be. We’ve done what we can. This patrol ends here.” The Corporal had suddenly taken back the leadership. Perhaps because he finally knew how to take his men down a path that they wanted to go and still satisfy his mission. The man, the real casualty, would probably not survive the night anyway. So the platoon commander would not hear him at stand too the next morning. His voice had been so low anyway.
Dawn would soon be approaching.
They had come together into a sort of circle but with Cello standing apart, on his own. “For me it doesn’t end.” He said.
They seemed to notice then that he did not have his rifle.
“Pick up your weapon,” said the Corporal in a slow deliberate voice.
“Come on Marcus, no sense in carrying on like that is there,” said Henry. It was the first time he had spoken.
“Yes Cello, this is over for us,” added Ben.
“And if you don’t come with us, that’s you deserting,” said Jack simply.
“How can I be deserting. I want to carry on with the mission. I want to find this man.”
“And I have said we are finished,” said the Corporal. “So you are disobeying orders and you have thrown away your rifle, so that’s another offence.”
“A very serious one,” added Jack.
“It’s not an offence, for me it is the right thing to do.”
“You don’t have that ability, to think what is right and wrong. You obey orders. You pick up your rifle and come with us. That is your order. That is what you must obey. If not then you will have to suffer the consequences.” The pipe-smoking Corporal whose mouth had quivered and demeanour had seemed weak, suddenly found strength.
But Cello seemed the stronger one even though he had no military backing for it. “We had a mission; or did we? What was the mission? Was it to rescue a casualty, or end his life because of the burden that his crying, his voice accusing us, had put on us? To remove that burden, we have shot a man. Now we can return with our consciences clear… You can return, not me. You speak of orders. We had been given an order, bring him back. But…we didn’t even have a stretcher.”
“We are not fucking stretcher-bearers,” said Jack.
“But our mission was to rescue the casualty.”
The others were silent.
“Our mission was to find him,” said the Corporal.
“No, you remember what the officer said, ‘bring that man back.’ Those were his final words. Is that not true Corp?” asked Cello.
“Yes but…”
“So you in fact are the one disobeying orders.”
“I am the one who makes the decisions. I have made one.”
“Yes, you have made one, perhaps a wrong one.”
But Cello was on his own, against the others, only one of whom, apart from the Corporal, seemed to have a voice, the others were bending. Their bodies had no resistance. So they could not stand with Cello.
“That’s not for you to judge. Your duty is to obey orders, the last order… mine.”
They had forgotten every rule of military discipline and were standing in a huddle, not guarding themselves, or each other, not ready to fight. So an explosion from afar reminded them of where they were and slowly they sank, to the mud. “Come on men, let’s get out of here,” urged the Corporal. His duty was also to look after his men.
They turned their backs on Cello. He had put himself beyond the boundary of being worthy of looking after.
The Corporal turned a final time. “Are you coming then, private… what is your name again?”
“It’s Harris, that’s my name,” said Cello.
“Well Private Harris. I’m ordering you to pick up your rifle and come with us. If you do not you will be not only disobeying an order… You have already cast aside your rifle and you know how serious an offence that is… And you are in effect going awol, so that is the offence of desertion as well.”
“No, that’s not what I’m doing is it. I’m still on the mission to find that casualty and bring him to safety.” Cello stood with the strength of a man possessing free will.
“You don’t just wander around in No Man’s Land conducting your own mission,” scoffed Jack. “You are a soldier, although I know to you that means nothing… does it? To us it means obeying orders and doing what you’re told.”
“When it suits you,” suggested Cello.
“Well it suits us right now. So you better make up your mind.”
“My mind is made up.” Cello stood his ground as if guarding the grizzly half man in the mud.
“If your mind is made up then you will have to face the consequences.” The Corporal turned away again and he took the other men with him, willingly or reluctantly. They didn’t verbally identify themselves on either side. Their bodies however moved as though they had no choice.
Cello was standing still as the others splashed back through the water. There was a slight pause midway and Ben turned, came back to where Cello’s rifle was and picked it up gingerly. He looked at Cello and their eyes met across the darkness.
When passing weapons from one soldier to another the bolt should always be opened to ‘prove’ its condition; whether ready to fire or not. This was a special circumstance. This weapon was not proved. They were taking control of the .303 to help prove that Cello had cast it away.
He seemed happy to let it go. The moment was sealed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Alone
Cello was alone, but suddenly not lonely. He sat down near the body, which had attracted such revulsion and fear but now was his only companion. He thought about water, as his mouth was very dry. He was cold as well. He had some water in his bottle, but no blanket or great coat. The great coat had not been available to the men. As it was spring, they had just rain capes. But these had been left in the trench. When it rained he would get even colder. Wet did not matter, but being cold and wet without something to cover your body took away your spirit even quicker.
It wasn’t raining now, so water had to be taken from his bottle. That was the only good thing about rain. You could drink it while it ran down your face. It had been cleaned by the clouds, filtered. So you could fill your bottle with it also, without chemical cleaners.
He felt light; no rifle, no bayonet either. How was he to defend himself?
Did the man sharing this space with him have any weapons on him, under him. Cello looked at the body, covered in mud, as if he had bathed in it.
The water carrier, a steel bottle with a capacity of one pint and a half, covered in green or brown hessian held on the belt by a web carrier, was difficult to extract, especially when the canvas webbing was wet. It was little more than half full. It did not provide the correct amount of water for a fully-grown man in a very physical environment for a day. So Cello sipped it, tasting the chemical purification. It calmed him though, so he was able to think rationally about his rifle. He had never fired it at a man, not stabbed a man with the bayonet. So he concluded that if he needed to use any weapon to defend himself he would probably not be able to do it. If that led to him being killed, then let that come.
He had already gone beyond his threshold of courage. He was now in the high plain of free will which required him to make decisions, not just go over the top when the whistle blew.
Replacing the cork stopper with a steady hand, he sat with head bowed. Now he could think and make a plan. The crying was no longer there. But where had it come from. It must have been further out. They had hugged a line from the trenches almost parallel with their own lines where men waited to attack; so it was told, in un
derground bunkers. But he had to go out further, where they had searched through periscopes, over folds in the ground, folds where you could hide, when the sun came up. He didn’t know whether to fear or welcome that. Would he be able to search then? He had no periscope. But being closer to the casualty perhaps he wouldn’t need one.
He had no compass either. The moon of before and stars were clouded over. There was a dull thunder from afar; the anger of the guns; from the German side. That would be his bearing and star for guidance; through the wilderness.
He looked for a better place to sit, where his back could be supported. He found a steeper bank a little to the left and as he moved there he put his arms out gingerly to control something; his cello. Right there; he held his beloved cello.
He had wanted to bring it out with him to France. After all it was a travelling cello, brought for the reason of taking it around to places that a normal instrument in its huge awkward box could not be taken. Thus it folded down into a manageable carrying case. But in the end he left it for his mother to look after. He regretted that now and wished he could play a lament to the man here.
So he began to mime one. It started with a very low moan. The strings trembled with the weight of the bow applied suddenly with a hand and wrist carving the music out. The music was created by the hands. He had not composed music but often thought he should. Now all he could do was imagine… and mime.
He had to get his cello. If he ever got out of this, that’s what he would do.
But for now he hefted the imaginary music; the low shaking lament; a moan that could express better than any words, a feeling; his feeling. But then any music was also beyond the human feeling. It came from the earth and passed the living by, leaving them breathless and taken out of themselves, leaving them with a memory of things they didn’t know they knew and an understanding of things that they might know in the future, from the earth. A low frequency cuts the air but is often unheard by humans; an elephant talking from afar, a thousand cellos talking. If only all the rifles could be replaced by cellos. He thought of this, of the sound they would make. They would shake the world then; out of this terrible stupidity. They could make a gigantic fart as the soldier’s expression of this war.
A Cellist Soldier Page 6