by Thomas Wood
We occupied ourselves by replacing sandbags, building a mini fortress around an anti-aircraft gun and machine gun so it faced back towards the village, in the inevitable act of defending a counter attack.
“…you got a girlfriend mate?”
“Yeah…” I croaked, only just having time to clear my throat before Len was off again.
“Good for you. Good for you. Of course, we have only…”
I laid my Sten against the steel beam of the bridge, checking on it regularly as if it were a new-born baby in the night.
“…and so, I suppose I talk rather a lot when I’m nervous. But then again…”
He continued jabbering on about his life at home, his girlfriend, his old job, what he would do when he got back, anything just to keep his jaw moving it seemed. I didn’t take the blindest bit of notice, maybe I should have, he probably mentioned where he was from. My mind was elsewhere, it was still with the Pole, lying under the straw mattress until some other poor soul was tasked with the job of burying him. Maybe he wouldn’t be buried at all. I supposed by morning it was possible that the whole village would be flattened, and we would all be buried under layer upon layer of rubble.
“…and so, I decided to volunteer, rather than wait for the call-up. According to my brother you get a rough deal if you wait for the draft, he joined up back in thirty-nine when…”
I watched intently as the moonlight glistened on the river, illuminating the banks on either side. It was perfectly flat, completely still, not a single ripple was to be seen. It was like a perfect sheet of glass, mirroring the sky with pinpoint accuracy, every star that adorned the sky, so too it was on the water. If it wasn’t for the freezing temperature, I would have been half tempted to go in for a dip. I decided to wait and see what the weather was like in the morning.
In another lifetime I could have taken a longboat along it and taken in the French countryside. I would have basked in the warm sunshine as it kissed my face, letting a few freckles poke out from the depths of my skin. Maybe in another lifetime I would have sailed underneath it in the summer sunshine, instead of being on it in the middle of the night.
Len’s blabbering suddenly stopped. I hadn’t paid attention, but the continuous soundtrack had become almost soothing to me, knowing that with everything going on in my mind, someone was able to carry on as normal. It had become my anchor.
The continuous absence of his voice seemed to continue for a few moments longer. I turned to see what had made him stop, half expecting to see an officer standing there ready to bark at us, or maybe even the Prime Minister congratulating us on a cracking job well done. I would shake his hand enthusiastically, after double checking the hygiene standard of my own, before smiling broadly for the cameraman stood by his side. The pin stripes of his suit would look ridiculous amongst all the sea of khaki that was running around us, causing a clamour as they all fought for a glance. I would tell him how much I had enjoyed taking the fight to the enemy, making them run scared as if Death himself was chasing them, scythe drawn and all.
But I was wrong.
Len’s face was pressed against the hard steel structure of the bridge, almost kissing the tip of my boots, with his arms stretched out like a child pretending to be a plane. His rifle lay by his side, knocked over as he collapsed into the wall of sandbags it was propped up against. A few of the sandbags hung precariously over the edge of the wall as he’d clattered into them, dragging them downwards.
The back of his helmet had a gaping hole. The netting over it was twisted and entangled in the cave that had burrowed through his helmet. There was no blood, just a dark abyss, a ravine of unknown depth tunnelling its way into his skull. It reminded me almost of an entrance to a rabbit warren, a fairly humble entrance, but the extent to which the rabbit had excavated, completely hidden.
I couldn’t make out a speck of blood on him. No hint of it on his kit or his uniform, and his helmet was in almost pristine condition. Gravity beckoning it to the floor, some of Len’s blood began to trickle its way down the back of my neck, a place on the ground already earmarked for its landing zone by a pathfinder force of blood.
I interrupted the flow of the stream as I stuck my hand below the line of the back of my helmet. Slowly wiping my clammy, numb hand around my neck, I felt it collect a sample of Len’s scarlet fluid.
I inspected my hand again, I was shaking this time, and watched as the moon lit up every detail of my hand. Parts of it were unaffected, tiny diamonds of sweat glinting in the light of the midnight moon. Great smears of blood soiled the rest, burying itself into every line and crevice in my hand. For the second time in the space of an hour I found myself inspecting a dead man’s blood on my hands.
It was a deep red, darker than any other blood I had ever seen before, it almost didn’t look like blood.
I blinked furiously as I fought back tears, a mixture of strenuous breathing through my nose and violent intakes of breath through my mouth followed. The world around me swayed as the nausea kicked in and, for a moment, it felt as though the bridge had been blown and I stood on thin air, waiting for the moment I was sent plummeting into the freezing waters below.
I tried to compose myself as best I could, while I stared at Len’s corpse. I willed him to talk, to say anything, more for my own sake rather than for his. I needed that new-found normality back. I felt sick force its way through my stomach and attempt to get out. My stomach clamped as I began to retch while an agonising fire raged within me. I bent over, trying to force it out of the pits of my belly, but before I could, I felt myself clatter into the floor.
I waited for the explosion of pain I suspected that would follow being hit by a German round. But none of it came, it was almost as if I was suddenly at peace with everything that had happened.
The vomit had vanished, the hyperventilating had ceased. I couldn’t feel my hands shaking anymore, instead, I lay perfectly still. There was no pain, no feeling of impending doom or dread, just a brief moment of serenity. Was this death? Had I passed over? Who would I meet?
I wasn’t in heaven that was for sure. The vomit had returned and pushed itself out more forcefully, leaving an incredible taste in my mouth and a burning sensation in my nose.
I spat out a rather pathetic attempt at vomiting as noises began reaching my ears again. Another confirmation that I wasn’t in heaven. Screams and gunshots rang out, before a hissing reached my ear with an accompanying lump of weight. I was almost disappointed that I wasn’t dead, I certainly wasn’t relieved to find myself still in the hellhole of France.
“When you hear ‘sniper’, you get down you idiot!” The hiss was so threatening it could have been an enemy soldier, the tone of murderous aggression was unbelievable. Lying on me silently for a moment too long, I felt like a child as the weight removed itself from me. Vulnerable. Only still living and breathing because I had always seemed to be someone else’s responsibility. Sergeant-Major Baker’s, Charlie’s, Len’s and now my hissing helper. I wanted to curl myself up and tuck myself behind the sandbags until I felt I could come out again.
I clung to my knees in desperation as I huddled myself into the sandbags, letting them engulf me. I stared at the bridge, great beads of blood had begun trickling down, racing each other to the floor. Some droplets were interrupted by the random bits of brain matter decorating the bridge, bits of Len, ingrained into the bridge forever.
It would be wiped clean soon enough, a light rainfall would be all that it needed. It would probably be reopened as a bridge before too long and years later, car after car will trundle over it not knowing that men had become part of this bridge. They would all be forgotten.
A fury rose up inside me, an aggression and hatred so strong for the generation not yet born that I leapt up, and following the red-hot tracer rounds that pierced the chill of the night, emptied a magazine into the French air. They were just token rounds, there was no way they would even get close to the sniper. But it made me feel good. It made me feel like I had
taken revenge.
Len hadn’t known what had happened to him. It was easier for me to take knowing that one moment, he was talking about the comforts he had in his life; his home, his girlfriend, his family and the next, he was just gone. He didn’t exist anymore.
I shook my arm out to relieve it from the pummelling it had just taken from the Sten. It hurt more than normal, just standing there I could almost feel the bruising form around my joints. I pulled another magazine from my belt and as I did so watched carefully as one man stepped up with a PIAT gun.
It was a burdensome weapon, but one that was deadly if used correctly. I watched as he was almost propelled to the other side of the bridge as he pulled the trigger, forcing a spear tipped projectile out of the end. It was lobbed through the air, and came down with such a crash on a nearby building I felt the ground quiver slightly, maybe it was as scared as I was.
The round had fallen short, but the man’s determination was to be commended. Rounds kept pinging their way towards the building the sniper was in before the anti-aircraft gun ripped rounds through the walls. The low, booming, tapping noise was far more comforting to me than the constant tapping of the German machine gun. It probably had something to do with the fact that these rounds were directed away from me, not trying to cut me down. Sparks lit up as they pummelled their way into the brickwork, before large chunks of the wall began flying out in all directions. A short burst, and most of the side of the building was gone.
A few overenthusiastic men charged up to the building, weapons at the ready. Silence ensued once more, an uneasy perfection had engulfed us.
Men began to mill around once more, lighting cigarettes and restarting conversations with one another, all the while the water remained like glass, faithfully reflecting the moonlight. I was alone this time, no one to help me clean my hands, no one to offer me a cigarette or restart a conversation with. All these men around me, and I felt alone, totally abandoned.
The whole episode can’t have taken longer than twenty seconds. The men seemed more focused this time, they didn’t cheer or celebrate, they worked in pairs, one of them weapon drawn, eyes peeled.
The anger had left me in that short burst of rounds. I was already on my way to forgetting about Len.
His body was being dragged back towards the landing zone, where a khaki blanket would be pulled up over him, waiting in the grotesque queue, along with the Pole, to be buried.
10
20th November 1917
07.04 hours
The Germans’ sick game of hide and seek continued as they staggered closer and closer to our Doris. Doris was dead, so were most of her crew, the last three perched inside, ready for the same fate.
Bill had begun to let out a putrid stink, exaggerated by the heat and enclosed situation we found ourselves in. Lieutenant Harper had pulled his tunic over Bill, so we didn’t have to feel his eyes critiquing our last few moments. Even with just the three of us inside, with the engines off, the atmosphere had become suffocating. I was desperate to open up the hatch in front of me and suck in fresh, clean air and feel it cleanse my insides as it swirled its way around. The face of the German on the other side played on my mind, so much so that I had to settle for the imaginative air that I had convinced myself of.
Eric had begun whispering to himself, a prayer of some kind, or a plea. His muttering had intensified and in the absence of all other sound it seemed as if he was screaming, his murmuring sliding its way around the cab only interrupted by another sentence of madman rambling.
I didn't know too much about him. I knew he was Welsh and that he had volunteered rather than wait to be conscripted. Fair enough, I had done the same. He was quiet, and kept himself to himself, never socialising with the rest of the crew on the outside, always taking himself off somewhere before miraculously reappearing just as we had orders to move off. Whether a man was loud or quiet was neither here nor there, for, in a tank, everything was done by hand signals anyway. It seemed to suit him.
From looking at him though, he had had a tough upbringing. His eyes seemed to display a maturity that the rest of him hadn't quite caught up with yet, the kind when a young man has seen a horrific scene before him, understanding the true nature of man. They burned a deep blue, a penetrating blue, but also held a sorrowful glare behind them. His eyes troubled me, they would stay with me for the rest of my life.
I had wondered for hours about what had caused him the pain and sorrow that he didn't express, the tragedy or the trauma that had shaped the man he was today. Maybe it had been this very war. It was entirely possible that before this war had started, he had been bright eyed and endlessly happy, but now his eyes were full of pure anguish. The death and the callousness of the human heart was enough to make anyone emotionless, given away only by the mournful tone of the pupils. Maybe he could tell the same of me. I hadn't looked in a mirror for what felt like years so had no idea of how my facial features gave away my past experiences. I had no recollection of how I even looked.
I hoped, at least, that my eyes hid some of the tumultuous thoughts from within. I had started this war as a young patriot, the belief that what I was doing was for my country, to fight for freedom and prosperity. That had soon changed when I saw the power of a six-pounder. A solitary young man, exploding in all directions and scattering himself afar. My eyes seemed torn at what to look at, I could almost feel them separate as one followed his lower leg, while the other followed his head, going in the opposite direction. In the actual event, however, my eyes had fixed firmly on the place where he had once stood, now a smoking, empty crater of mud, no sign of its previous living occupant. This had changed me. I had started this war as a scared patriot, I believed that the enemy had been the antichrist, the very Satan that I had been brought up to pray against, manifested in humanness. We had been told they were all battle hardened, merciless, murderers. But he had been a small boy. I often dreamt of the fear on his face as the shot was ordered, and watched as the shell landed somewhere around his feet, closing his eyes and welcoming death in a reluctant embrace.
Since that moment, I possessed a feeling of regret at every round that was spat out of my Lewis gun, every shell that pummelled its way from Doris. My feelings could not overhang my actions, there would be seven other witnesses to my cowardice, seven others willing to stick a bullet in my skull for not doing my duty. I feared every moment that my cowardice would be seen the moment someone made eye contact, and I desperately hoped my pupils masked the fear, the sorrow that encompassed me.
As I reflected on my own situation, I stroked gently over the oily stubble that had sprouted from my chin. The scratching noise that it produced echoed off the steel structure and shocked me into submission.
I distracted myself by looking over at Eric once more. I noticed for the first time that his hands were tough, covered in a layer of grime and grease. They were larger than how I imagined they should have been and they were dry and cracked. He must have lost some sort of feeling in them as on more than one occasion he had placed his hand on the searingly hot engine, as it was glowing red hot, for a number of seconds before calmly removing it.
He used to wear a ring. I thought at first it was a wedding ring, but then discarded this thought on account of his young age. But then again, we were all young men, in age at least, but the experience of war had only served to mature us, to age us. He hadn't made mention of a wife or a girlfriend, always pushing the subject matter away at any given opportunity, focusing instead on Doris or the war itself.
Maybe he had been married to Doris, as a mechanic, he knew her better than any of us, and encouraged her in helping us out of tricky situations. We had all been married to Doris, in one way or another. She had given us all the emotions of love, nervousness, excitement and stability, when we had first seen her. It was exactly the same feeling that I had experienced when I met Mary. It was a chance meeting, although I knew her from the village, I had never actually spoken to her. She never came into the bakery until h
er mother fell desperately ill. I often told myself at the time that her mother becoming gravely ill was possibly the best thing that ever happened in my life. I never, however much I wanted to, told her that that was how I had felt about her mother, as she would die a few weeks after we had been married. It seemed easier to fall in love back then, there was no war, no daily demonstrations of different ways to die or watching men butcher each other. But then, there was a war, and I took the King’s shilling. I took one step closer to death that day and, deep down, I knew it. I married Mary on my first leave home. If I was to die, I wanted her to benefit from it. My feelings for Mary, in her absence in my life, had grown, likewise my feelings for Doris, in her constant presence, had continued to grow right up to this moment, where all I wanted was to be as far away from the steel box as I could be.
I thought of Thetford forest again, the constant singing of the birds would be enough to keep my soul content. Mary would often sit there with me for hours, her eyes tightly shut, letting the soundtrack enter her, with no need for the landscape to play its part. She would often escape to a different world in her mind. A world that I could never see.
Eric wasn't wearing the ring today. It was noticeably absent, as he had always kept it brilliantly clean so that, even when his hands were filthy, a dull sparkle would still glisten in the light.
There was no sparkle today, it had gone out.
I wondered what they would do to us, the Germans, if we made it that far. The callousness in the Lieutenant’s voice had made me fear him more than them, and I was willing to take my chances in surrendering.
I could imagine us, paraded in front of a garrison of troops, Doris towed behind, the bounty of their expedition displayed for all to see. Each and every one of the young men would have a story to tell when they got back to camp about how they captured a British tank and her crew. No doubt the stories would be embellished and polished up in preparation for their arrival back home. Many hundreds of women would be serenaded with the tale of their bravery and gallantry as they stormed the most heavily armoured weapon of the war. They would be hailed as heroes. We would be muck.