CHAPTER TWELVE
Somme, France, 1916.
3rd July 1916.
Hours of searching passed and still I had not found Roger. Crawling through piles and piles of dead men, missing limbs and blood was an exhausting task. As well as the fact it was physically and mentally draining. It was like a living nightmare and even though you cannot see death alive, this experience came in a close second. I’ve passed hundreds of men, some who were barely alive and some who are only a few inches from death. I have also passed hundreds of detached limbs that are now not attached to their owners. Arms and legs all blown off and all dotted around no man’s land. I kept low to the ground and the darkness kept me camouflaged from the Germans, but I still ducked behind everything I could, which of course were mainly dead bodies. I had practically lost my sense of direction and I had no light of guidance to help me. Even the moon had gone into hiding. He was hiding behind the clouds, but at least he could escape by use of the curtains of clouds that would surely close at his command. My only comforting thought was that in a few hours the light of the sun would come up, but even that created a problem. When the sun came up, the fighting would begin again. Time was running out and I needed to get a move on.
I continued to crawl through no man’s land for about another ten minutes, and I passed some more dead bodies. I stopped to take a breath and the moon came out from its hiding place. I looked at the dead man next to me and I had to blink several times until I realised who it was. It was Roger, I had found him. I let out a sigh of relief and I went to see if he was alive.
“Thomas? Is that you?” Roger said with difficulty and between sharp breaths.
“Roger, yes, yes it’s me” I replied in a hurry.
“Thank god. I thought you were another German, coming to finish me off” Roger said, almost laughing.
I did not need light to let me know Roger was in a bad way. I lifted his head up and I gave him some water and he swallowed it thankfully.
“Roger, do you have any idea where you are injured? I need to stop the bleeding” I said.
“I know I’m not going to make it Thomas – but there is something, well many things that I need to apologies for. Firstly, I should never have acted like a rich fool and burned your father’s land. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, well I wasn’t thinking and that was the problem. I should have thought about the consequences, and I felt incredibly guilty when your father took his own life. We should have realised that we were going to ruin a man’s life and income – but we didn’t think of it like that, we didn’t care or think about money because well, we didn’t have to. I know I was not alone in my feeling of guilt, Albert and my brother Paul, wherever he is right now felt guilty too. I know you couldn’t attend the funeral and really that was because of our actions too, but I want you to know that your father wasn’t alone – I went to his funeral. We were young and only cared about our petty hate, never really looking at the world around us” Roger said.
“I agree with you on that one, and I am grateful that you went to my father’s funeral service, but you don’t have to feel guilty completely about his death. He was dying on the inside way before you, Paul and Albert burned our land and for that well, I should never have punched you. We shouldn’t have acted the way we did, but as I was saying my father had always drunk too much and after my mother died, he lost himself completely. On top of the grief he now had, he not only drank more and more alcohol, but because he had no other source of income he went into the world of crime and robberies – dragging us along with him. He let us get caught for the crime he arranged and I think that guilt on top of everything else, led him to take his own life. You don’t have to feel guilty for everything Roger – it was partly your families fault, but it was also his fault, along with myself and my brother’s. He was a ruined man already, so don’t feel guilty.” I replied, explaining everything.
“Well thank you, I appreciate that but I do need to take some responsibility for acting like a rich fool and not thinking of other’s and their livelihood. I should not have burned your father’s land just because you punched me, after something so petty that I can’t even remember what it was. Just promise me one thing - get out Thomas, make a new life for yourself – you deserve it more than I ever did, but please find my brother Paul and get him home. He is not a bad lad, he has just been following the wrong influence his entire life - me” Roger said.
“I will do, Roger” I replied.
“Just one other thing, if you can get my body back to England, I don’t want to be buried here. I feel like I’ve been buried all ready” Roger said.
“I will” I replied.
“Thank you Thomas” Roger said.
As Roger finished speaking, he took his last breath and died. The amount of times back home, I might have wished for this. Roger to be gone, but he had made me realise how silly we had been in our childhood, all of the mistakes we had made and could have avoided. Tears began to fall down my face and I sat there blubbering like a baby. You could almost hear the laughter of no man’s land. It came in a chill. Then a wave of emotions came over me. Anger, grief, worry but most of all I was scared and then I just did not care. I felt like jumping and shouting “hey! I’m over here! Why don’t you just come and get me!”. Of course I didn’t, but if it was not for Rogers body still on top of me, I might have done and then I too would be dead. Then I remembered. I made a promise to Roger, a dying man’s last wish and I would not deny him that. I had promised to take him back home. A rush of energy and adrenaline came over me. I was going to get back to the trench and I would make a new life for myself in my childhood home of Little Hadford. I would apologise for past mistakes and hope people accepted the apology. I would take care of my one surviving brother. My family, Rob. I hadn’t seen him since we jumped over the trenches this morning. I prayed to God that he had made it.
I had promised Roger that I would get his body back home and that is exactly what I intended to do. Do not be mistaken this would be no easy feat. Crawling my way through no man’s land in the dark with an injured foot was bad enough, but now I had to pull a dead man’s body back too and he was not exactly light. I used all the strength I had left and even that was barely enough. I headed back in the direction I came and hoped it was the direction of our trench.
I pulled Roger’s body back through no man’s land for what seemed to be hours but then out of nowhere, the sound of explosion erupted and once again I was blown into the air. I was aware that I was suspended above ground and I knew the blackness would come.
....
Sure enough the blackness came and I was knocked unconscious. The funny thing [well maybe not so funny] is when I woke, I cried. Not in pain, but in sadness that the blackness did not stay, I now wanted to die. I came to the decision that my brother and friend’s would have been killed in this battle, no one would have survived this. It would have been too impossible to survive. Roger’s body had been thrown up in the air during the explosion and I had no idea where it was. I gave up hope of recovery and hope of life. My dreams of making a new life for myself back in Little Hadford had vanished just as quickly as they had arrived.
The hours passed and they slowly turned into days. I had landed in a ditch and I stayed there, making no attempt to move. I waited for death. My left foot had been injured once again and this time I could not stop the bleeding. It continued to bleed and I was sure that eventually all of my blood would seep out of the hole in my foot. I was growing tired of waiting for death and I was considering what to do when my eyes glanced over to my right hand side and I saw a red poppy.
The flower was living and full of life, but completely deserted and surrounded by land that has been destroyed by war, destroyed by man’s disputes. I realised the sad effect war not only had on people, but on everything that you set your eyes on. It was a sign that life and beautiful life did exist on this land, once before. Before war and blood. Before death made its presence welcome. The p
oppy itself was not dying, but the land around it was and it didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving. Peace was dead and gone. The poppy was broken. Broken by blood.
Just like my foot, it had been punched by war – by humanity. There was no place left for me in this world anymore. I hope that one day, after this brutal war has finished and life returns to this land, that humanity will never make the same pivotal mistakes again. Humanity and our Earth will recover, they will prevail, but I will either suffer for days to come and die by slowly bleeding to death, or I will be brave and end my life. I choose the latter.
….
As he contemplated his own death, Thomas Millward gained all the courage he had and shot himself. With one bullet he ended his life, and his gravestone was engraved with Private Thomas Millward, aged twenty nine.
Future Works
My next novel will be part of a fantasy series called ‘The Children of the Stars’ and the first novel will be released on the 1st December 2014. I am also working on future novels, some of which will be released next year.
I also have a novella called ‘The Final Dawn’ which is available for purchase on Amazon.
Many thanks for your support.
The Broken Poppy Page 17