by Thomas Wood
Sargent and I had signed up after the war had been declared, and had merely been two additions to the company after they had arrived in France. Bob had got to the front before I had, but was mightily glad that I had arrived when I did, so that I could take over the baton of platoon scapegoat.
Out of the platoon strength of almost fifty men, we had just enough remaining to scrape together one section of twelve. I could only hope that all the other companies involved had fared far better than we had done. We had been completely decimated.
I took another sip of water, clamping my mouth shut immediately after and holding my hand up, to stop the urge to vomit it all straight back up again and waste what could be my last bit of water for hours.
I had already thrown up on three separate occasions in the twenty minutes or so after the advance, the images of bodies sitting sodden at the bottom of shell holes and men with no limbs hopping around out in No Man’s Land, running rampant in my mind.
Fortunately, I hadn’t been the only one to have done so, Sargent and Beattie spewing up watery substances along the sides of the trenches also, much to the disgust of men like Etwell.
“Pathetic,” he had muttered as I coughed up the yellowy remnants of my stomach lining, “you’ll never make a real soldier.”
I didn’t have time to retaliate, even if I had wanted to, as several officers began to charge down the trenches, issuing orders to any men that they could find.
“Start shoring up those parapets gentlemen, prepare for a counter-attack.”
Sergeant Needs began to issue specific orders to us, making sure that we wouldn’t fall foul of the senior officer’s typically vague commands.
“You two, go and find some sacks, the engineers should have them. Then start stuffing them. Beattie, Ellis, start clearing up that rubble there, pack it back into the wall. I don’t want that collapsing.”
He continued to issue order after order, even choosing to ignore the muttering of Etwell, protesting about wanting to at least have a little break before being thrust back into work. I admired the way that Needs was working, coolly and professionally, making sure that everyone pulled their weight, including him.
Ever since I had met him I was struck by his stature and how he seemed to have a hold over his men. I couldn’t quite work out what it was. Admiration? Maybe. Fear? Possibly. Whatever it was, it worked in this platoon, and he wasn’t going to let that slip just because we’d had less than an hour’s worth of fighting.
I was horrified, as Beattie and I began to dig out the collapsed section of trench, to discover two bodies buried under the mound, both young Germans, one with no legs attached. I felt like being sick again, but I didn’t have the energy nor the substance for anything to come out, I just stood and stared at them for a moment, their waxy skin already losing their natural colour.
“What’s the matter, Ellis?” the sergeant queried.
“The bodies, Sergeant Needs. Wh-what do we do with them?” I thought I could make out a few chuckles and sniggers from the other lads, which were soon hushed up as the sergeant spoke.
“We leave them, Ellis. Move them out of the way if you want, but don’t waste your time on them. Defence is our priority. That’s what will keep you alive, son.”
I jumped as I began tugging at one of the bodies, submerged by the rubble, as I heard a low groan, which turned into a shout. Beattie began to laugh.
“Relax, Ellis. It’s not him. It’s coming from out there. This always happens.”
I stood, for a moment, trying to make sense of what he meant, as the groans turned into yells, and I realised they weren’t coming from the trench, but from No Man’s Land.
“When the artillery stops, you can always hear them. Plus, those that have been knocked out wake up, right about now. You’ll get used to it.”
I didn’t see how I could, the screams were horrifying, as I was forced to listen to the tormented souls for hours afterwards, while we tried our best to make this trench our own.
“The artillery will keep them quiet in a bit, don’t worry.”
“Our artillery?”
“We’d be lucky. No, the Germans. They’ll be a bit miffed that we’ve got their trench now, to tell you the truth. Surprised it hasn’t come down yet.”
I was beginning to feel even more helpless now than when I had done when I was back in Britain. There seemed like there would be no end to the rainfall of shells and the monotony of a machine gunner’s bullets until we were safely back behind the line, which was going to be a number of days away at the very least.
“You got a girlfriend then, Ellis?” Beattie suddenly piped up, clearly cottoning onto the fact that I wasn’t exactly feeling optimistic at that moment in time.
“No,” I retorted defensively, taking even myself by surprise.
“Alright, alright, I was only asking. Don’t bite my ‘ead off.”
“Sorry,” I conceded, “I’m just feeling a little jumpy. What about you?”
“Eh?”
“A girl, you got one back at home?”
“Back at home?” called Harris from the other side of the trench, now enjoying a cigarette. “He’s got about four in the village not five miles from here! And that’s not counting the one that he met when we first arrived in France!”
I waited for Beattie to refute the claims, but all that met my gaze was a wry smile, and a slight shrug.
“I could be dead tomorrow,” he muttered, quite without a care. It surprised me somewhat, as he was an unremarkable fellow; he was of quite a slight build and medium in height, coming up a few inches shorter than I was. His eyes were bland, which seemed to match his hair and, in amongst all the dirt that he had acquired over his skin and uniform, he was completely ordinary.
“He is, Ellis, known as a Poodle faker.”
“Now that is too far,” Beattie suddenly sparked up, jabbing a finger towards Harris, who was now laughing so hard that I thought he might suck us all into the giant vortex that was his mouth.
“I am not a Poodle faker,” Beattie said, trying earnestly to defend himself, “I just like talking to women is all.”
I hadn’t heard of the phrase Poodle faker when I arrived on the frontline, but ever since, it was one that I heard on more than one occasion to describe the gentleman whose pursuits seemed to lead them into a woman’s bedroom, just as often as a loyal poodle did.
“The sprog doesn’t believe you, Sam! Look at his face!” I enjoyed being accepted into their circles of mickey taking and gentle prodding, but I wasn’t sure on the nickname that they had selected for me; ‘the sprog.’ I did not know what to make of it either, whether it was a term of brotherly affection, or merely an attempt to bait me, something which I was not quick in taking.
“Yeah well, just because you lot seem to want to be killed, doesn’t mean I have to stop talking to the lovely ladies around here. Who knows, I could be leaving France with a lovely Mrs Beattie on my arm.”
“Paa haa, you’ll be lucky!”
“Yeah well, either way, I’m still better with the ladies than you Dougie,” Beattie said directed towards Harris, as he stopped what he was doing to withdraw a cigarette from his top pocket. He shoved the packet under my nose, giving a gentle nod to take one. I shook my head.
“Still? Blimey. You’re going to have to start eventually mate.”
“I give it three more days,” piped up Sargent, “once he really starts getting stuck in he’ll realise he needs them.”
I wondered what he had meant by that, especially as he had only been in France for four weeks longer than I had. But then again, I reasoned, I had only been here two weeks and I hadn’t seen a single German in all that time and now, here I was, preparing to sleep in their trenches.
And I still hadn’t fired a single round from my rifle.
4
I felt my legs twitching as someone began to kick me awake, gently at first, before growing impatient at my apparent reluctance to wake up from my slumber.
Sl
eeping on the fire step hadn’t been all that uncomfortable, but I couldn’t quite believe that it was already my turn on watch, after what had felt like less than five minutes of sleep.
A small gas lantern hissed away in the corner of the trench, and I could just about make out the flickering faces of Beattie and Sargent as they played a quick game of cards with one another. Etwell was perched on the makeshift fire step, the one that had hastily been set up facing what was now our frontline.
I could make out the broad, wide shouldered outline of Sergeant Needs as he stood watching over me, like he had been my guardian angel for the whole time that I had been asleep. He turned his head towards the others, so that he caught his face in the light and I could make out almost every feature of his aging, rough face. He had some sort of crater next to his left eye, where a piece of shrapnel had embedded itself just above his cheek bone some months before.
“Ellis, come on,” he half-whispered half-shouted at me, tapping me on the feet for a third time. Sensing some sort of urgency in his voice, I bolted upright, ready to face a German attack if there was one heading our way. The speed with which I got up, grabbed the others’ attention.
“Right, listen in,” declared Sergeant Needs, making Beattie drop his playing cards and reach for his cap. “We’re moving further north, to reinforce the line there and shore up our left flank. We’ll be heading into the German’s reserve trenches, they’ve abandoned them completely. Reinforcements are headed here to allow for a better defence. Apparently, we are a depleted company at the moment.”
“You don’t say,” Harris muttered under his breath.
“Grab your kit. We’ll move in five minutes, how does that sound?”
We didn’t have much to grab, most of it was either already left behind in the town five miles away, some French locals operating a sort of locker system for the fighting troops, or it was strapped firmly into the pouches of our webbing. We would be ready in about thirty seconds. Still, it was nice not to feel so rushed.
“Oh, and by the way,” he said, almost as an afterthought, “seeing as the Lieutenant has put his wooden overcoat on, I’m now acting as the platoon commander. So, best behaviour.”
“Always for you, Sergeant,” Harris said mockingly, blowing a series of kisses over towards him, which the sergeant took in his stride.
“So then, Sergeant,” Beattie said, hopping up from his stool to fall in behind Needs, “does this mean I’m a full corporal now?”
“No, Acting Corporal Beattie, it does not. Only an officer can deal with that kind of dizzying promotion.”
The lads all began sniggering, as Beattie turned dejectedly away to go and grab his rifle.
“Don’t know why you’re all laughing,” he said sulkily, “I’m still higher up the food chain than you lot.”
“So, that’s that then,” Bob Sargent declared, “Lieutenant Fairweather is gone then.”
“I always knew he’d get a goodnight kiss,” Harris chimed in, “he had that sort of face…Shame though, I kind of liked him.”
I had too, he had been kind to me from the first day that I had joined the platoon. He hadn’t been overly friendly, but he had made himself accessible enough that I felt like I was able to take my various concerns to him, when they had cropped up.
Etwell had been the reason for the first visit that I had made to see Lieutenant Fairweather, the first time that he had threatened to shoot me for being far too young to be on the front line. I wasn’t a sensitive soul, but it had affected me and I had seen no other option than to request a transfer to a different platoon, or at the very least to a different section, so that I didn’t have to spend as much of my day with the awful bloke.
“The thing about Etwell is,” Lieutenant Fairweather had said with a sigh, “he’s trapped in his own little world. It’s all so black and white to him, but he can’t seem to let anyone else in. He is convinced that everyone here is going to die, so he doesn’t want to get close to anyone. It’s done out of an affection really.”
I had tried to protest somewhat with him, but the Lieutenant was adamant, “He is a damn fine soldier, Ellis. A brilliant one. He’d make a fantastic NCO if it wasn’t for his temper. Just stay on the right side of him and you’ll be fine, he knows that he’s not allowed to be a fighter anymore.”
I wasn’t exactly comforted by Lieutenant Fairweather’s words, but he had the discretion to mention it to no one, which I was grateful for. He may have made no further mention on the subject, but I was acutely aware that he was keeping half an eye on the situation, and I was convinced that Etwell knew it too.
“Fairweather wasn’t the only one to cop it,” chimed in Bob Sargent, as we descended into a melancholic recital of all the men from the platoon that we had seen gunned down, earlier on in the day. “Hawling went down like a sack of spuds. Oh, and Saunders went out for a duck as well.”
“That was his first time out? I didn’t know that. Oh, now that is a shame, I liked him.”
Harris continued with the grotesque roll call, “Then there’s Nash, Shaw and Harrison. Actually, did anyone see Harrison go down?” No one answered, but all just sat in an empty silence, before he answered his own question, “’Cos I didn’t.”
“Apparently,” Beattie added, trying to move the tone along from all the men that we knew that were now dead, “the Garhwalis got hit pretty bad today.”
“Oh right, did they?” Etwell growled in a rare occasion of joining in with a conversation. “That’s funny because so did we.” He marched over to Beattie to look him dead in the eyes.
“Yeah…I know that. C’mon Herb, we’re just trying to make conversation.”
Etwell spun away from him, making to grab his kit, as I caught Beattie raising his eyebrows to Harris. Suddenly, Etwell spun around again, facing all of us.
“You missed someone off the list. I bet you don’t even know who it is,” he only gave us half a second to think before he began to launch into his next phase of speech. “Corporal Milne. Remember him?”
I did. I knew we all did. But no one said anything, for fear that Etwell would suddenly turn on one of us and smash seven bells out of us. I could just about make out Beattie making his way slowly towards Etwell’s rifle, doing us all a favour.
“Corporal Daniel Milne,” he repeated, which sent a shockwave of guilt and embarrassment surging around my body and I immediately felt like Etwell was directing his ramblings towards me.
Milne had been the one who had stopped for me during the advance, only for a second or two, but that was all that it had taken. If I hadn’t frozen to the spot during that advance, then he wouldn’t have had to have paused to grab me. If only he hadn’t stopped, he could have been a few yards further ahead than what he was, which meant that the twisted shrapnel wouldn’t be hanging arrogantly from his neck, nor would a similar piece be protruding from his chest.
It had all been my fault. In that moment I realised that I owed my life to Milne, on more than one count. If I had stayed frozen where I was, I would have been cut down by German bullets, a perfect stationary target that anyone could have used as practice. But also, because, if he hadn’t been standing where he was, those shell fragments would have ripped their way through my skin, and not his. I should have been dead, and I knew that Etwell could tell I had come to that realisation, from the look on my face.
“It was you! If you hadn’t stopped, he would still be alive! We were going to make it through this war, together. Now, I have nothing, absolutely nothing in my life that is worth living for.”
He took two paces towards me and came so close into my face that he spat over me as he spoke, his warm breath intertwining with mine as he stood there.
“You better buck your ideas up. A good soldier died for you. A good man. All you’re good for is making us look over our shoulders to check you’re coming with us.”
“Oi, come on now Etwell, that’s enough. It’s not all down to him. You’ve had your release,” I felt Bob sidle up next to me.
“No, you’re right,” he said, stepping away from me slightly, as if he was conceding, “It’s not all down to him. It’s you too. You helped to kill Milne.”
“Eh? How’d you figure that one out?”
“You shouldn’t even be ‘ere. You’re the kind of blokes that are going to get us all killed. You should have stayed at home! You should have left it to us professionals. It took the Germans years to build up their army, years and years of hard graft and training. And what have we got? Four hundred thousand teenagers in six weeks they’re telling us. Four hundred thousand spotty, weak teenagers who suddenly decide they want to help! What chance do we stand?!”
Accusingly, he stepped back up in to both of our faces, “You should have just let us professionals deal with it, not help us to a quick death.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but instantly knew that I had made the wrong decision as Etwell bolted for me.
“Got something to say have you, Sprog?”
I was grateful that Beattie was closer to Etwell’s rifle than he was, as I was sure that if it had been within his grasp he would be burying round after round in my gut.
“That’s enough Etwell,” Sergeant Needs eventually said, trying to shove a massive shoulder in between Etwell’s face and mine. “Go over there and take five, now.”
Sergeant Needs spoke forcefully, and with such a conviction that I felt like I was getting a dressing down in the process.
“He needs to learn how to fight, Sarge!” Etwell protested, his ears still steaming as he struggled to calm down over the loss of his friend.
“Yes, I agree,” announced the sergeant, “he will get his chance, Etwell. Soon enough. You know that.”
Sergeant Needs and Etwell continued to stare one another down, before the sergeant eventually came out on top, as Etwell backed away to gather up his things.
I was suddenly awash with feelings of inadequacy and incompetence, and for a moment I thought that Etwell was right.