by Thomas Wood
I would know, I had been the one to read them to so many parents when their eyes were over saturated with salty water.
It was the distant booming of guns that made me cut away from that nonsense. I strained my ears and tilted my head to try to distinguish what it was. I thought for a moment that we were lower than we were supposed to be and it was small arms fire. My heart jumped up at the thought that we were hearing the first few noises of the invasion.
The rumbling continued for half a second longer than it should have done for small arms and the sudden jerking of the Horsa confirmed to me what was happening.
The ack-ack guns had been woken up, and were zeroing in on the aircraft caught in the beam of the searchlight. I held my breath as I heard the pff, pff, pff, pff of the ack-ack opening up in bursts, waiting as each shell exploded around me.
There was nothing we could do except listen to the pff, pff, pff, pff and wait for the rounds to burst. Hopefully for us, the Germans had miscalculated our height or speed, preferably both, causing the rounds to explode well beneath, and behind us.
The wobbles from the Horsa seemed to intensify to full on seizures with each burst of flak, meaning only one thing; they were getting closer to hitting us. I waited and waited for the moment that we would be towed out of range of the guns, so that we would be left in peace to carry on our journey.
It was as my ears felt the pressure wave of a round bursting just a bit too close to us and the Horsa was thrown lurching to one side, that I noticed something. It was standard procedure to open the door of the Horsa, to allow for quick disembarkation, but I had positioned myself directly opposite it. As we were thrown about by the never-ending flak, I didn’t really fancy my chances of being chucked out the door, especially when I didn’t have a parachute strapped to my back.
I waited for my opportunity to switch sides, and tuck myself in amongst the structure of the Horsa, so that I could at least grab hold of its insides if it decided it was my turn to leave. I waited until I heard the comparatively soft pff, pff, pff, pff again and knew I would have just under a second before the shells began exploding, hopefully around us.
I pushed myself with all my energy up onto my feet, and practically threw myself across to the other side, hoping that I would nestle in the gap just next to the door, and not be thrown right out of it. I hit the side with such a force that I felt the fuselage flex and it creaked under my weight. But it held.
I felt eyes boring into me as I settled myself down, sharply exhaling to bring my heart, and breathing rate, back down to normal. I felt a few of them breathe in as they prepared to shout an expletive or two, but before they could, a terrible ripping noise exploded all around us.
The ack-ack round ripped its way up through the floor of the Horsa, cannoned its way through the fuselage and straight out of the ceiling, taking the bench that I had just been perched on with it.
Nervous laughter replaced the cracking noise of splintered wood and shouts of “I’m sticking with you Sergeant-Major!” began to register in my mind.
I wiped the image of what could have just happened from my mind as quick as the shell had passed through the fuselage.
“It must have been a duff shell, you’re one lucky bloke!” screamed the Captain.
“With any luck, it’ll fall back down on them then so I can have some peace!” shouted one of the Sappers.
I didn’t feel anything. I felt totally numb. As a soldier, I thought I would feel something coming this close to death, but just then, I had not felt a thing. All I could feel, was like I had been injected with a tranquiliser, and I couldn’t move a single limb.
But, suddenly, as quick as the round had passed through the cabin, an incredible fury raged within me, to the point where I screamed. All that tightly packed anger and constant frustration, had finally bubbled over.
“When are we going to land!” I screamed at the top of my voice, “And when will those guns stop!”
Pff, pff, pff, pff
“Any minute now Sergeant-Major, we’ll be casting off, right on time.” The thumbs up was the only thing that appeared from around the pilot’s seat.
“Just as soon as we land…that thumb…” Willis began muttering to himself. It seemed everyone was becoming as frustrated and irritable as I was. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
Right on time…
That meant that Harry would have landed by now. Full of hopefulness and optimism, I pictured little Harry wandering around the French countryside, gathering together with the rest of his unit. I desperately didn’t want to think of him, wandering around on his own, in the darkness of the night. It was an image I toyed with for a moment, even thinking for a second that it would be good if he was on his own. If he was on his own, he might miss the assault, turn up in the morning after the battle had been fought, and won.
“Stop firing at us! Leave us! Please!” Willis was beginning to lose it and for his sake more than anyone else’s I willed the ack-ack to simply give up on us. I prayed for a power cut and the searchlight to be cut off. But I knew it was unlikely to turn out that way.
We were in a waiting game now. We were waiting for the fateful round to rip though a section of the Horsa’s structure that would separate us from the pilots. A round that would condemn us all to a few thousand-yard freefall towards earth. A round that would seal our fate.
“Snap out of it, Willis” I found myself yelling back at him. I hoped that my words were having more of an effect on him than they were on me.
Pff, pff, pff, pff.
18
Having a bout of lack of confidence in your own abilities is something that comes naturally to every soldier, especially after a close shave. And that ack-ack round that burst through the floor of the Horsa on that night was one of my closest shaves. It would stay with me for the rest of my days.
But I had a sudden attack on myself, I began asking myself what I could have done better, not just in the last few seconds or minutes, but the last few months, years even. Memories began to surface from the pool of unknown depth that lurks at the back of your conscious mind, not quite in the unconscious, but in the darkness enough so that it doesn’t distract from your day to day life. I suddenly found myself hating my life, hating the decisions that I had made that had led to this moment.
I had put undue stress and anxiety on my wife, by pursuing to keep as many young men as safe as I possibly could. I began to think that it was pointless, I knew that these boys would die with or without me. It was all down to luck. It was luck that had made me change position in the glider, luck had determined when that German sentry had decided to pull the trigger on the anti-aircraft gun, luck that had made Arthur knight stick his head over the log just as a mortar launched deadly pieces of bark towards his neck. There was nothing that I could do about anything. Harry was going to die, and so was I.
An infuriating dissatisfaction with my life and current predicament continued on for what felt like an eternity. I felt as if, even if I did somehow make it back to England, and safely on the other side of this war, that I would never be able to enjoy my life ever again. I would constantly bear the weight of those dead boys on my back, I would forever feel the weight of Harfield on my shoulder, as he took rounds to his chest. I would always be watching Arthur Knight trying to speak with a wooden splinter through his mouth. I would never be able to conjure up a happy memory ever again.
I felt like a prisoner in my own skin, just waiting for the day that I could be released. I was already dead on the inside. I felt like I had given up, a switch had been flicked the moment that I watched that round pass through the Horsa. I should have been killed right there and then. I should have been severed by that round, bits of me should have been lying over the floor of the Horsa, and my flesh should have rotted away with the plywood that would undoubtedly remain somewhere in France for however long, until someone found me.
I began to question why I should stay alive. Why shouldn’t I put a round in my rifle no
w and put an end to all of this? I wouldn’t be a husband to my wife anymore, for I wasn’t the same man. I wouldn’t be a father to my kids, but what sort of father had I been to this point anyway? They would hardly be able to point me out on a parade of twenty men.
My mind was all over the place and each thought only stayed in my head long enough for it to register, before it dissipated into nothing. I looked at the other boys and felt a yearning in my heart that they were not experiencing the same turmoil in their minds like I was.
It was looking at them that I slowly began to straighten my thoughts, staring at each one of them, and realising what they expected of me, that I began to control my own speculations. Yes, I should be dead, I should be splattered all over the inside of a wooden glider, but the fact was, I wasn’t. And so, I needed to carry on as normal, they needed me to carry on as normal.
I readjusted my thought processes, to focus on what I was here to do, what my job was, my purpose. I had to make sure that that high explosive made it to the casemates. I had to keep thinking about the consequences otherwise. What would happen if I didn’t get it to the casemates? The boys wouldn’t be able to disable the guns. Simple as that.
If they didn’t do that, then we would have to sit tight on the battery until the main invasion force had made its landing at the beaches. But we couldn’t do that. We had other jobs to do, other objectives to secure to make sure that even fewer boys would be killed.
If I didn’t get that explosive to those concrete boxes then those guns would be firing on our other boys and leave them floundering on those beachheads. I wouldn’t see those boys with my own eyes, but I would see them in my mind, in my nightmares. And the prospect of that happening was far worse than seeing the devastation physically.
I made sure that Sapper Taylor was still here, that we had remembered to bring him along with us and that, more importantly, he was still alive. He was the one that would be coming with me, making our way as quickly as was humanly possible to the battery, with or without the support of everyone else in the glider. We were carrying enough explosives with us to make Guy Fawkes jealous and so if there was anyone that I wanted alive in this glider, it was Taylor.
My job was to make sure the HE arrived safely at the casemates. Or was it to keep the young, unarmed medic alive? I couldn’t stay focused on one or the other. It was more than likely that trying to fulfil just one of these jobs would get me killed, so I would have to decide sooner or later as to which one I was going to carry out.
One dead medic or hundreds of boys blown to nothing?
I slipped into thinking once again that it was petrifyingly easy for me to be killed before I could even begin my tasks as an HE carrier or medic-saver. It would be easy for another round to get luckier this time and rip its way through my body, especially as the searchlight was still transfixed on us, like it was obsessed. I couldn’t see us getting out of this unscathed.
If we did, it would be simple for me to step into the path of an oncoming 7.92 round, like an unsuspecting deer would, while it was being stalked. One of those rounds through any part of my body would spell the end of the war for me, and if it went through any of my vital organs, it was game over more or less immediately.
Company Sergeant-Major Norman Baker 6132475 would exist no longer. He would become another casualty of war, never to be heard from or about ever again. His wife would receive a telegram expressing sympathies from His Majesty and His Government, if she is lucky she will receive one from the Commanding Officer, if he survives.
In short, I would be forgotten. And quickly. I could be killed on landing, and if I survived that, it could be one of the hundreds of mines surrounding the target that got me. I could be killed very quickly in the middle of a firefight, or it might be more prolonged at the mercy of a terrible injury. I couldn’t tell.
What I could tell though was that anyone who was killed tonight, would be forgotten quite soon afterwards. The jobs and roles that were occupying the minds of these men were far more important than the lives of their comrades, their friends. It was the forgetfulness of those at home that would trouble me the most.
I could go to the street of Privates Knight, Vidler, Harfield or even Corporal Carter and know with an almost certainty that no one on their respective streets would remember them anymore. Only their families would be keeping their memory alive, but what hope was there for them after their family had left that street, after they had left this world?
We would all soon be forgotten. And the sooner I gripped that fact, rather than dancing around it getting all worked up, the sooner I would be able to wipe the frustrations from my mind and focus on what was required of me. What was expected.
What would feel worse than the prospect of being forgotten was the prospect of not fulfilling one’s duties. It was my job to get that HE to where it needed to be, and the buck stopped with me. The only comfort that I could get from failing to fulfil that criteria was the knowledge that each of these boys I was landing with on that night, knew what my role was, as well as their own. They would be there to prise the HE from my grip, if that was what was needed, to make sure it got to its destination.
The rest of the men in this battalion were hard grafters. It hadn’t come naturally to some of them, but they had worked hard to earn their berets, to earn the insignia. They knew what it was to be a part of a team. And that was the only comfort in my own death that I felt I could take.
19
I was showered with a warm liquid as my brain struggled to keep up with what was going on inside the glider. I was still feeling numb from when the first ack-ack shell had passed through the Horsa, and everything that was happening was taking a lot longer to process than it should have been.
I needed to be switched on, I was in a position of authority, of trust, and these men needed me to be at my absolute sharpest.
It is hard to remain sharpened and unaffected when a shell has just passed through someone who is in your company. There had been a sobering thud, and I couldn’t quite work out if that was the sound of the wood cracking as a round penetrated the fuselage, or if it was the sound of ripping flesh as it thumped its way into Willis’ body.
I got a sudden rush of air as we whistled through the sky, an unintended window where Willis had been resting on till half a second ago. I could now see a snapshot of the midnight sky, lit up like every torch in Northern France was being pointed to the heavens. Tracers danced their way into the sky before fizzling out, and I could just make out a glow on the horizon where fires were burning. I hoped desperately that they were German defences and headquarters on fire, and not our aircraft.
Willis had taken an anti-aircraft shell to the back, with an untold number of splinters embedded in him from the Horsa. It had ripped through his smock and his pack and had exposed a nice entanglement of flesh and innards, which slowly began to spill over onto the deck of the aircraft, swilling around as we were jostled to and fro.
He wasn’t quite dead yet. He didn’t scream, or even ask for help, he just lay there, twitching ever so slightly. I could feel my insides go numb as I stared at him, imagining the burning sensation as his organs began to shut down, pieces of his own life support system lying in smithereens inside the casing of his skin.
The rattling of the machine guns and the anti-aircraft guns down below seemed to dull, as Willis began to fight for air, his throat rattling and crackling as he began to lose his fight. It doesn’t matter how much you want to live or die, or how badly you are injured, a dying man will always put up a fight. It’s his body’s natural instinct to not give up.
In his mind I was sure that Willis knew he wouldn’t win, but his body convulsed and continued trying to pump what little oxygen it had, up to his brain.
“No First Aid! Stay where you are!” bellowed the Captain, “No First Aid…” His voice began to trail off remorsefully as we all sat there, watching Willis slowly bow out of this mortal realm. The Captain had struck me as hard-nosed, and quite a cold indivi
dual, but in that fleeting second of an order, he regained his emotion, his human-like empathy.
He rubbed his eyes as he came to terms with his first casualty, before we had even managed to make it to the ground.
I had always understood the logic behind the ‘No First Aid’ rule, but it had been a difficult one to grasp, especially when these boys were so young. There was no point in trying to save a life in the back of a glider, because in doing so, we risked injury to ourselves, and others by trying to get to the casualty.
During training it was easy, the simulated casualties would just lie there, and the real ones were never life-threatening. Watching someone die while you just sat there was different.
Willis began to go into shock, his eyes rolled to the back of his head as his eyelids began to droop down, before jolting open again like an electrical current had passed through them. His face began to develop into a haunting smile, his teeth layered with copious amounts of scarlet liquid that he was struggling to keep away from his airway. He smiled and began to chuckle, bubbles of blood simmering away in the back of his throat so he sounded like he was underwater.
“Hello, Mum…” he began to say, before allowing his eyes to roll back once more, and letting his eyelids take control over his movements. They didn’t fully close, instead, they got about halfway down before hovering in a permanent glare at the roof of the Horsa.
I wondered for a second if that had been the moment he had died, or whether he was still with us for a moment or two more. All I knew however, was that he had stopped twitching, the bubbling blood had stopped simmering in his throat and his eyes stopped lolling around his head.