A Cellist Soldier

by Robert J. Fanshawe

  The earth

  He awoke. It must have been morning, the hours of sleep had seemed moments; to more murmuring in the background of his consciousness. Then a shout from outside, a shout of panic. A bombardment?

  Why had they put this field hospital here, without cover?

  Was it all a dream?

  A crashing literally lifted the bunk he was lying on. But it came down again.

  “GEH RAUS, RAUS, RAUS!”

  “PUT THIS ON.” The white coat was beside him again, why him, who wasn’t injured?

  ANOTHER CRASH. Instruments and tables spilled this time. Cello’s bunk tilted but didn’t lift.

  She held out one of the white aprons with a red cross on it.

  “Can you run, English?”

  “I can try.”

  “Yes you better do it.”

  In the confusion he managed to get out. He saw some knocked over water jerrycan spilling. Water could not be wasted like that. Water bottle, bottle, anything.

  He turned back to the tumbling chaos where colours were merged, casualties had been thrown from bunks their wounds broken open afresh so red stood like a broken signal, a tattered flag. They screamed as well. Glass slid together and broke. Some bottles were not broken. He caught one up and came back to the jerrycan, still dribbling. He filled the glass bottle. It was probably a urine bottle. He hadn’t thought to drain it first.

  Another crash. Earth flew up. A scream. “MEDIZIN.”

  Someone had seen his Red Cross apron.

  Cello stood. Eyes looked at him from yards away. The crashing stopped, only in his mind though.

  Back again to the chaos of the tent. BANDAGES! Near where the breaking glass had been there were some. He gathered himself. Instead of holding the bottle he drank from it.

  “RAUS!” Someone was in his face. Did they think he was German? People were running in panic.

  He ran out before the face realised he was the English ‘guest’.

  The man who had summoned him lay half out of a trench. What of his legs? Sergeant Wall again, his legs riddled. But no it was an arm blown under him, that had taken a hit of shrapnel. Cello pulled him up into a sitting position in the shallow trench. The arm was spurting blood.

  He put the man’s hand on the spurt indicating to grip tight. It didn’t stop the bleeding. He took the arm back, lifted it. He pulled some of the man’s sleeve, hanging in tatters. It came off easily. He wrapped it into a ball and put it into the crook of the raised arm.

  The bombardment continued. But they didn’t notice. They could have been blown apart at any moment.

  Cello sat there intent on his work. He tied the bandage as tightly as he could, round as many times as possible, then looped to the head to hold the arm up trapped so hard that the bleeding should stop. It slowed. He let the man drink.

  They got down in the trench. Down to the earth.

  Yes he could have run, but that might be running into the bombardment.

  The earth, the earth. Its arms will shield you better than your legs can carry you.

  It will catch the shrapnel in its soft spraying hand.

  Stay safe in my coolness, it says; while the bombardment screeches overhead.

  They are not under the earth, the earth is fighting with them, trying to spit against the explosions.

  Cello’s inner ear began to compose music to the sound of the earth? The blows of the bombardment would be a crash of bow on strings? Notes from a low grip. His hand would need to be like a hammer in one moment and a surgeon’s knife the next. The earth had no hand in creating the bombardment. It cried against it. The earth hurts. It would cry with a long moan, vibrating strings, then a high-pitched crash again, then a low rumbling. The earth bleeds. Its streams cannot run free, like veins; they bog and bulge with mud that festers in the poison of war. Strings tremor low, like the complaining water, then high to a screech as the bombardment crashes again, and again.

  Oh earth, brown like an old cello, brown and pitted but still alive, ready to throw against the bombardment: to throw up in defence of the blows it was taking.

  Let it stop? Or will you take us into you, oh earth? You don’t deserve this. We have caused your pain and you are defending us.

  Cello pushed the casualty’s head down further into the depths of the trench. Some soil pattered over them like grateful rain. Thank you earth! Gently cover us.

  The bandaged arm was gradually turning pink. Blood was coming. Perhaps he could use the man’s bayonet as a tourniquet.

  The hail was soft earth, not hard shrapnel.

  The sound was not like a cello. It was the music of hell. That was where they were. The crashing, the last whine as the shells in an instant ripped through the air towards the earth, the patter of earth thrown up.

  Those guns had a terrible anger. Every crash was an insane repetition of some monstrous vendetta. Music? Never. WAR IS A MONSTER THAT DEVOURS every good thing belching out a choking miasma.

  The casualty collector – him.

  What’s your job Tommy, not a medic are you? What are you?

  I’m a cellist. He had said.

  Here they would Have said; Raus, Raus, dirty English in our hospital.

  Some would. But the white-coated woman?

  The conductor of an orchestra controls the music.

  There was no conductor. The artillery bombardment just flew down irresponsibly; careless of where it hit: lazy, irresponsible destruction.

  Cello, saw this and his heart began to rebel. Why should this happen, in such an indiscriminate way. War was never tidy. Death happened and no one took responsibility.

  It was not the anger that gave him strength. The music, gave him strength, the music he must make.

  The man looked at him. Soon he would speak. But what did it matter? WHO IS THE ENEMY IN WAR? Who was his enemy?

  He looked at the man and raised his eyes, meaning: how are you? But the man just dropped his head.

  Where was this man’s weapon?

  When you give a soldier a rifle and more weapons, it makes them more vulnerable to a shameful failure. When someone doesn’t have a weapon they can have naked bravery.

  Should he run now? Run screaming to his own side hoping that they wouldn’t shoot him as he made his dash; dressed in his absurd white apron with its red cross.

  No he would not run. At least not that way, not yet.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Those in need of help

  The bombardment had come from his side, his English side. When would he be blamed for that if he stayed. The looks he received in the hospital, would be more than looks.

  But the closeness of this casualty. The trust he had put. They were on an island in this inferno where the looks were different. Whoever the man next to you is, he becomes your best friend.

  So who was the enemy here?

  Why should enemies not get help from each other, give help? Why should they have a personal vendetta to settle?

  Revenge was different. Shoot my friend and I will want to shoot you.

  The trenches created hate. A sniper’s bullet delivered it: a precision weapon, unlike the artillery of the bombardment, but both created hate, a sort of unfocused indistinct hate. “I am English,” he said as another crash hit the earth. He said it from under his fall of dirty blond hair as he checked the man’s bandage. His face had not been washed, just wiped by a bandage, wet from the water he had drunk. But the face of the injured man looked directly at him, ignoring others who moved around them and ignoring the hell of the moment of destruction.

  Then he grinned. “English? You are English!” Then he laughed.

  Did he believe Cello?

  In battle things are said and done which are beyond humanity. The moment controls everything, though nothing is controlled. Humanity can go to its depth and bring a terror; or a touch from a heart with a feeling like blood returning, like wounds being inexplicably healed; can melt hate away.

  Now the bombardment faded and what was left were
the cries of the humans damaged by the inhuman, unconducted artillery.

  Cello listened to the silence, blistered by cries. Had the bombardment moved on or ceased. The silence made him feel the cries more. It took him back to the cries of John Thomas Wall. They had sounded demented at times, close to death. But when he found the Sergeant, he seemed far from death, despite two days of lying in a mud hole.

  So why had he died?

  A shaft hurt Cello’s heart.

  That made up his mind. He lifted his head to look for more casualties. Maybe he could get to them and do something. He had nothing to give, no more bandages, only a small amount of water in the bottle.

  But the silence now seemed filled. The voices of children suddenly came from his inner ear. The cries were those of happiness not pain, a relief from the crashing.

  Was another artillery shell waiting in the clouds to fall?

  A tiny screech answered him; YES.

  He buried his head in dirty earth hands; OH GOD not more. The silence was better. Give us back the silence and the cries of children.

  God answered him. But it was not total silence.

  A small hiss came to him. Then the cries were suddenly more alarmed, much more urgent.

  He looked up. He had to look up. A shell was buried. It had not exploded.

  It was too close to the wreckage of the tented hospital, far too close.

  There was no thought in Cello, no decision, no words in his inner ear. He gathered up the casualty; “COME, COME, RUN!”

  They ran, away from the hissing thing. HUH HUH, KEEP RUNNING. They grunted as they went.

  Others took up their example and loosed their bonds of paralysis. They exploded like rats whose hiding place had just been revealed. They had been hiding in tiny pockets of earth or behind wooden crates of supplies.

  But Cello and his charge did not see them go. They were over the first small lip of the ridge and looking for suitable cover. A shallow trench system was revealed. They went into it looking for safety and collapsed down again in a type of communications line. There were telephone wires running along it.

  Arms and legs and bodies were together, beating hearts and beating breath, stinking with anxiety, exploding out in each other’s face. The casualty had teeth, yellow from tobacco, some were broken. Cello tried to keep the man’s arm still and still bandaged. But it seemed to all start unravelling as they hit the ground. They had run for their lives. So what was one arm when they had preserved life, for the moment.

  The moment!

  Everything was a moment; a life and the living of it. But Cello did not have time to think or plan the next one because soon others joined them in the trench. They could not have been alone for more than a moment.

  There were cries and expletives which fell deaf to Cello, though the shouting voices searched him for understanding. He nodded hopefully and dumbly. They became more strident.

  Were there casualties here? Did they need help?

  The soldier cellist checked his casualty, set the arm more comfortably. If that were possible.

  Then he stood up.

  They were in a line of men. The white-coated doctor, if she had been a doctor, was not there. They were in tatters. There were no fighting soldiers here. There were no gamekeepers. These were logistic people. If the English came now over the ridge, they could walk through this line and kill them all, scythe them down. Except he, the soldier cellist, had a kind of flag that might stop them.

  It had a double meaning, this flag; a red cross; two slashes of blood on white. It could mean fight and cut through the white, like a crusader. But everybody knew it for something else.

  “Medizin.” A strangling cry from further down the line. A hand raised. The hospital had gone. He, Cello, was the hospital for this moment. He could do nothing but respond. To ignore would have cast suspicion on him. He was in that sense a prisoner. But he didn’t think this. He didn’t have time to think. He waded down the line, past the prone or sitting bodies, past the suspicious, past the frightened and the indifferent. Some looked at him sullenly, soon with a kind of comfort, a trustiness. None raised a hand against him.

  He moved purposefully onward and came to this casualty, who seemed strangely bent over, doubled almost. He was retching and some blood was coming up in his coughs.

  There had been talk. There was always rumour, but this was more than rumour, of a terrible illness sweeping the world; a flu sickness. Soldiers confined to barracks or their trench have no knowledge of the rest of the world. Nor do they care unless they are affected. In some cases soldiers were affected.

  This could be such a case.

  Cello had another bandage, somehow. He knelt beside the man and wrapped it into a pad which he handed over. He extracted the man’s water bottle and after the man had momentarily paused in his coughing, he handed it to him. The man drank and then sunk back against the trench wall.

  Cello knew he should not breathe near the man. He instinctively knew that. So he stood up again.

  The hissing had stopped. Silence had fallen.

  Slowly, Cello, the burier of his friend, the hospital patient, then the part-time medic and now the survivor; moved back towards the wrecked tent.

  Of course he was not the only survivor. Others had mostly run in the other direction. They slunk back under the example of the English casualty, a now gaunt and slightly leaning young figure, in large white apron, with a striking red cross, but without helmet. It had been lost somewhere in the destroyed hospital, which was a good thing. Had Cello hung onto it, for his own safety, he would be instantly recognisable.

  But personal safety had been long since placed into abeyance.

  For the sake of those in need of help.

  There were a lot of those now. Cello was not one of them. He had somehow regained some strength.

  The doctor directed operations. To get the main tentage back up. Cello was mystified again. The underground hospitals, the bunkers dug deep; so deep that no bombardment could reach them; why was this hospital so vulnerable? Why wasn’t it concealed? Why did it seem so close to the front, on the front for no real soldiers guarded it? A hospital, at least should be much further back.

  This one had been further back. There had been attacks that had depleted the resources of the Germans both on the front line and towards the rear.

  A hospital could not retreat quickly. Casualties under treatment cannot be moved. This was perhaps a hospital for the brave; a brave doctor treating people near the front.

  The woman doctor surveyed the wreckage. It wasn’t completely wrecked. It was as if a mighty wind had swept through it, turning things upside down, breaking bottles. There had been no direct hit so the hospital had not disappeared into a crater.

  Setting to, the men and one woman began to bring the hospital back to shape.

  Cello just imitated what others were doing, helping. Blown down tents can be repaired with rope. Canvas and wood beds can be bandaged like men. But it was soon clear to Cello that enthusiasm to rebuild was lacking.

  They should be further back.

  But the men being treated finally began to become familiar to Cello as well as the fresh ones from the bombardment. Some had stayed in the wreckage. Some had run for cover, those that had legs.

  Blood and bandages and hanging faces soon showed Cello he was not in the right place. He would not lie down again on one of the beds here. He did not deserve a bed here.

  He was not one of those in need of help anymore.

  Cello caught the eye of the doctor. Evening was approaching. Under cover of darkness he could move. He went outside under the partial protection of the doctor. She indicated the West. No sun was setting. There would be rain in the night.

  Then Cello did begin to run.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The return

  The day grew on and the earth under Cello became unknown, uncared about. He hid in craters. As night approached he got up and strode over it. He thought at one point that he should wri
te to his mother. As if sitting down right now, he could do it. Men did. Some were always writing letters, especially out of the front line, but even in the trenches in the middle of a everything, they wrote; saying they were, ‘alright here,’ no one back home was to worry. Parcels were sent; chocolate, fags, writing paper, socks. Mothers were like factories supplying every form of comfort.

  His cello would be needed. That’s what he would ask his mother to send. Why had he not brought it? He deeply regretted that now. Perhaps at the time he thought he would not be able to carry it. Now the things he needed had reduced almost to nothing. But that one thing was needed.

  Please send my cello. Everything else is alright here really. We are in good heart and I have met some pals (they are Germans who decided not to shoot me or take me prisoner when I took a stroll over to their side). Strike that out, amend the sheet music. Play the tune; the tune that everybody else was playing. They didn’t want to upset anxious families at home. So phrases like ‘we are in good heart’ and ‘everything is alright here’, were regularly used. The censors probably liked them anyway.

  This was the tune that everybody played to.

  No, play the real tune.

  That was the job of an artist. Be truthful!

  Cello’s eyes were darker than night. They had retreated into his head. Nothing else had retreated.

  It had started to rain, hitting the rubberised surface of his apron, running down and streaming onto his puttees.

  He needed to stop and consider his plan. He couldn’t just walk into his own lines. He would be shot. The apron was probably already shining like a moon in the darkness, a walking moon; so obvious it was laughable. It was swishing noisily as well. They would wake each other in the trenches and start shooting at him and laughing as they did.

  Perhaps he was too obvious. That might be his saviour; brazen and free, unafraid.

  Yes unafraid. But still he crouched down to remove the apron. When it was light he might replace it. That would be the time to be bold, to show that he was unarmed and alone and therefore no threat to anyone.