by Thomas Wood
I had lost men before and I undoubtedly would go on to lose them again, but why had Arthur Knight captivated me so much? Why had his death taken a grip on my conscious mind and flipped it upside down?
Maybe it was the pain and fear that had tormented his eyes that had carved themselves into my soul. I prayed as I stepped off that Royal Navy destroyer, back in Southern England, that I would never see or experience that kind of violent or pathetic death that Arthur had been through, but knew that that moment that I had shared with Arthur as he realised that I would leave him, would be forever etched into my memory.
Part II
5
There were only two or three steps up to the front door, but each step had made me feel like I was one second closer to emptying the contents of my stomach on the door mat. I hated situations where I felt completely powerless, probably not the best trait to have in a Non-Commissioned Officer in the Army.
I hated it, I felt weak, vulnerable. I always felt like one of those stubborn twigs when I was in situations like this. You can bend it and twist it, trying in earnest to get it to snap but it never does, it never gives in. I felt like that right now, like someone else held the power, someone else was able to manipulate my situation and make me feel uncomfortable, and there was no option of snapping, no option of relief.
I enjoyed being back home, I liked being able to wear what I liked, when I liked. My clothes didn’t itch or rub, I was able to just wear them, like a normal man. I began to appreciate the monotony of civilian life; waking up, doing the daily chores, resting a little bit before going to sleep, ready to repeat it all the next day.
No one shouted, no one looked to me for guidance, but most importantly of all, no one died.
I descended one step as I released the door knocker, letting it clatter into the surface of the door. As I did so, I felt the anxiety deep in the pit of my stomach begin to unwind, like a spring being compressed and slowly released. It began to unfurl itself more, letting it snake its way through my stomach and up my throat, the anxiety slowly turning into the distinctive taste of vomit. I allowed myself a shaky breath to compose myself.
I turned to face back down the steps, looking out over the street to try and calm myself as much as possible. The street seemed like the war had completely bypassed it. There were no craters in the ground where five hundred and fifty-pound bombs had tried their best to take a look at the underground sewage systems. There was no evidence of a public air raid shelter, not even a single sign pointing you in the right direction when the drones overhead grew louder. As I took in more of my surroundings, I doubted if they even had an air raid siren in this part of the country.
The siren was one that I had learned to live with over the last few years, it seemed everywhere in the country, except for this quaint little village, had one stuck on a pole connected to the local police station. The wail it produced was enough to make anyone feel sick, and the feeling of nausea you got from riding the waves of its relentless up and down tones, was overwhelming. I scanned the street more in depth to see if I could see any signs of one, hiding away on one of the street corners or attached to one of the buildings.
The moan of the siren filled my head once more as I thought of the rush to a shelter each and every time it spun round. The eerie sound of one siren seemingly setting off another as a response, had been the last sound that so many people had heard before a high explosive cut them down or an incendiary burnt them into oblivion. Death and destruction was everywhere in my life, an all-encompassing reality that haunted my mind.
But not here, not in this street. The only sign of the war here was the odd house with crisscrossed tape across the windows, an attempt to stop shards of glass from flying all over the place from the pressure wave of a German bomb. They were hoped to stop the potential injury of firefighters, civil defence wardens and the like, but they were more likely used here to stop tiny shards of glass from decorating the new settee.
The road was clean and in a fantastic condition, perfectly smooth with not so much of a kink in the surface. It was adorned on either side with trees, not massive trees that had been standing for hundreds of years, but numerous, well placed trees, that can’t have been older than ten years old. It made the road look almost like a runway, with its side roads and cul-de-sacs branching off it like dispersal points and hangars.
A butcher came charging down the road on a bicycle, sausages stacked up full in his basket. They probably didn’t even have rationing around here either. He was followed shortly after by a police officer, his steel helmet hanging off his arm like a handbag. There was no need to wear it around here, they were perfectly safe.
As I stared in disbelief and anger at the residents of this village, I felt the nausea begin to pass. These people didn’t have a care in the world, they didn’t have a clue what the world outside of this parish was like at all.
I turned back to face the door and await an answer. The door was a glossy black, the kind of door that the Prime Minister hid behind, pretending to be one of the people. There was no number ten emblazoned across it though, this one had no number at all. Just a name, to the right of the door frame, ‘Orchard House’. The name gave me visions of grandeur, and I half expected a maid in a well pressed outfit, to greet me at the door, take my jacket and show me through to her employer.
Instead, I was greeted by a man on the wrong side of middle aged, but nevertheless in a sharp suit with gleaming shoes. I almost expected him to eject me from his doorstep due to the comparable state I was dressed in. He was a proud man; his shoulders were pushed back as far as they could go but his overall height was still hindered by the walking stick he now leant on.
I entertained myself with the thought that the stick was screaming at me, begging me to help relieve it of some of the almighty pressure that it was under, on account of the sheer size of the man. I anticipated to see a small indent in the ground when he shuffled the stick slightly, but there was none.
“Company Sergeant Major Baker?” he enquired, we had arranged this meeting a while ago, and I thought it unlikely that anyone else would turn up to his house at eleven o’clock on the dot, as we had organised.
“Yes, sir, but please, call me Norman.” I hated all the titles and ceremonious rubbish when I was not in the uniform. In the uniform it provided discipline and cohesion but outside it was just an excuse for men to transfer the power they once held over others.
“Norman…” he repeated as he put out a hand which I duly took. His grasp was firm but forgiving, as if he was expecting my grasp to be stronger than his and he’d over compensated. “Come in man, come in,” he muttered as he pivoted in his best attempt at parade square drill and hobbled into his hallway.
“You’ll have to excuse me Norman, I have to do everything here nowadays, and I’m awfully slow.” He spoke with a well-rounded accent, not quite like he was royalty, but not the common slur that would be tumbling its way from my mouth.
After much hobbling and muttering, he showed me to a chair, and, placing a steaming mug of coffee beside me, he took his chair opposite me, on the other side of the room. The chair he now occupied was obviously his chair, the whole room had been constructed to pivot around it. On one table to his left sat the wireless set, within easy grasp so as to flick it on and off without the need to so much as twist his shoulders. The table to his right was an array of books, all well-thumbed and some with the corners of the pages slightly upturned due to their age. The only one I could make out was the only one I guessed I’d ever heard of. The Holy Bible.
He shuffled backwards in his leather wing backed chair, so that the small of his back was pressed right into the crease where the back met the seat itself. He leant forward and rested his chin on his hands, which in turn occupied the top of his walking stick.
As he sorted himself, I took the opportunity to take a glance over the room. His chair was angled slightly so as to look out of the large, un-taped, bay window that sat at the front of the house. He had b
een able to see me coming up the pathway, there was no need for me to have knocked. The room was adorned with everything that one might expect from a family home, photos of wedding days, little artefacts passed down from generation to generation and an ancient looking clock. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this sitting room, no inkling of the accomplishments of this man.
“Now, my dear boy, thank you so much for coming,” his tone had already changed from one of being flustered and uncomfortable to one of reassurance and respect. Removing his glasses, he gave his eyes a slight rub, the burning green pigment now diluted slightly by the water that had rushed in to clean them up.
“You must tell me everything, I want to know all about it.”
Of course, he did, but how I was supposed to talk to a man of such great distinction and honour and tell him everything, was something that I had given great thought, but without much fruit. As I cleared my throat I debated with myself over which version of events would find its way out of my mouth today, the sanitised, telling your wife and mother how everything had gone, or the warts and all, honest airing of the truth.
I supposed I’d work that out along the way.
Part III
6
I made a point of making sure that I shook each and every one of these young boy’s hands. They were brave lads, they might not know it yet, but they were incredibly brave. These pilots had an average age of around twenty-three, but they were so switched on that they could have put a forty-year-old to shame.
These boys had completed a lot of hours on these aircraft and had completed several operational drops already. A lot of them, pilot officers and flying officers, technically outranked me, which for some blokes was a problem. A lot of men my age had served overseas before the war; India, Palestine, even Ireland and had seen a lot of action already. Other blokes had served overseas before the war and not seen any action, but that alone was enough to make them jealous of the boys who had seen more action in the space of twelve months. These lads had been commissioned into the Royal Air Force and were more or less immediately thrust into operational tours of duty. Some had completed over twenty bombing missions, mainly into the heart of Germany itself and so in my eyes, had more than justified the stripes on their shoulders.
But these were not my lads to look after. Mine were a lot more inexperienced in the ways of the world that they were about to jump into. I worried about them. Some of them were naïve, but a lot of them were downright stupid.
They dreamed of falling gracefully from the sky, weapons blazing, wiping out half the German army before they had even landed. They wanted to heroically take out machine gun posts, and artillery emplacements single handed, while freeing an occupied family at the same time. The reality would be quite different. A lot of them would be killed by anti-aircraft fire as they sat helplessly in the back of their planes, some of them might even go down with the aircraft engulfed with flames. They wouldn’t even get the chance to have a go at the enemy. Others would be taken out by a stray bullet or a short, sharp burst of machine gun fire, limbs ripped from their body as they charged towards their deaths.
On the ground, they would be my responsibility. I knew I couldn’t save them all, but if I could pull one of them from the jaws of death and send him home, with his tail between his legs, to his mother, then my job would be done. Ultimately, we would all be under the responsibility of the officers coming with us, but I found it difficult to trust them. Not because they were incapable or even untrustworthy, but they had an innate ability to be able to see the objective over one individual. That’s where I would fall down. I would compromise an entire mission if I knew that I could save one of my boys. Even if that meant jeopardising the lives of several other men who I had not met.
I found it difficult to live with myself sometimes. Often, I would be so convinced of my calling as a soldier that I was ready to go immediately, but sometimes I would feel attacked and would want to do nothing more than pace around the barracks. I had always prided myself on being able to deploy to all corners of the globe and place my personal life to the back of my mind, but now, I was struggling to cope with the thought that I would lose some of these boys again in the not too distant future. I had been pulled up on it several times during training, that I was taking too much of an interest in the way these boys fought, without paying enough attention to the way I was acting, and the overall objective of the company.
I felt like an old man now, I was in my thirties, while the rest of these boys had only just entered their twenties. I wasn’t old on civvie street, but in a world dominated by teenagers, anyone over the age of twenty-five is considered ancient. I had to be their father figure, and to a lot of them, I was. I had experienced the most combat, seen the most of the world, and they seemed to respect me for it. All of those achievements and accolades meant nothing to the machine gun that was spewing rounds at you though. I tried to warn them of the realities, without scaring them too much. It would be even worse for them if they were frozen still at the thought of watching their mates bleed to death, the thought of trying to patch yourself up as the enemy closed in around you. I only ever gave them the sanitised version of events.
I found myself allowing my mind to wander for a moment, to let it forge out a path as it dug up memories and threw up thoughts at what felt like random, as so often as my mind does. Memories of my childhood were tossed up into the air, and I let my brain catch them and drag them into my conscious thoughts. It wasn’t a particularly interesting one, just the average sort that you might expect of a working class lad, my parents loved me and I liked to mess around with my mates, standard. There was just one thing that seemed to separate me from the rest of the boys my age, something that I had never been able to shake, no matter how hard I tried and how weird the others thought I was because of it.
The fascination with trees had grown as I had got older, to the point where I could spend hours looking at one, and even longer trying to conquer its branches by pulling myself on top of them. But it wasn’t just that that had made me seem odd to some of the other boys, something that they couldn’t seem to understand or bring themselves round to do, that was to draw them. I had honed my craft from simple, basic drawings of the giants of nature, and had begun to understand the anatomy of them, the way they held themselves.
By the time I was in my early teens, I would much rather take myself off on an adventure, hiking for hours to find an intriguing and unpredictable tree, and spending hours afterwards just sketching and re-sketching, before I had it committed to memory, at which point, I would return home, to draw it in even more detail, this time in the comfort of my own bedroom.
I entertained myself with the thought that that was why I was so accustomed to life in the army. We would spend hours learning how to live off the land, days trying to sleep under the stars and make ourselves comfortable. I was streaks ahead of anyone else that I had ever come across, probably because I had taught myself long before they had even given it some thought, and that I had come up with my own tricks and techniques, to make the most of the natural world around me.
As I released the last hand of the pilots I had just met, they trudged back to their Dakotas, muttering under their breath about the bonkers Company Sergeant Major that had just requested to meet them. A couple of sniggers faded away into the night air as they cast bets on how long I would last once I was on the ground. I didn’t know if these were the pilots that would be transporting my boys, I didn’t even know if they were flying in the operation, but I had to size them up just in case. I didn’t know what stick my boys would be flying in, but by vetting the pilots, letting them know that I would hold them accountable if my lads didn’t make it out of the aircraft, made me feel a little bit better. Maybe it even gave my boys a slightly increased chance of making it home.
The Dakota was a majestic aircraft, I thought so anyway. It was a dual-prop, civilian transport plane before the war, converted for dropping troops into enemy held territory soon aft
er, allowing us to get plenty of jumps in for when the time came. It was a strong aircraft, hardly anything rattled like other planes we had been in, and it was relatively easy to jump out of.
As I stood looking at its invasion stripes, black and white lines on the wings and a set on the tail, I felt miserable at the thought that I wouldn’t be going in one. The Dakota was all metal, it was pretty fast for the amount of kit it could carry, and it offered some sort of protection to its occupants. The craft that I would be taking couldn’t have been more different.
The Horsa was wooden, and not a strong wood either, a single sheet of plywood made up the fuselage, only the floor was reinforced, and not to protect its occupants. It had no real top speed on account of the fact that it didn’t actually have any engines. That’s what I hated most about it, not the fact that I would be gliding silently into the combat area, but that I was helpless, my pilots would be helpless. I could have coped with it better if I knew that my pilots could have total control over the craft but all they had control over was how we crashed. The tow plane could be flying us into Berlin for all I knew.
I wanted to know that all my boys had the best chances of survival. The Horsas were not the safest way to deploy into France and so I had volunteered myself to go. I would much rather have my wife cry over me and my child grow up without remembering me than having these boys’ parents, wives, children, brothers and sisters all mourning the loss of them. So, surviving the first few minutes would greatly improve their chances of survival. Or so I thought.