by Thomas Wood
I became more agitated as I came to the realisation that our fate was unknown, and this was more daunting a thought than knowing for sure we were dead. We could be left, face down in the sodden ground of France, forgotten, only to be found in part by an overenthusiastic dog in years to come. I didn’t much fancy the idea of a dog parading around with one of my femur in his mouth, dropping it at the feet of his owner. I didn’t much like the idea of dying at all.
Besides, I had Mary to get home to. When I was sent to hell, she was all I could think about; my wife, my new wife, waiting for me at the door when I got home. Now, she was more of a distant memory than a wife, a photograph pinned carefully to the ceiling of Doris. She peered out from the sepia stained card, an expression of hope, but anxiety, all masked by a sweet smile that poked out from under her top lip. Unpicking it from its resting place, above my driving seat, I found myself running my muddied thumb over the surface of the picture, marvelling at the smoothness of her skin. I gave it a quick kiss, and placed it in the breast pocket of my shirt. They could take my life if they wanted, but I didn’t want them taking the only picture of my wife that I owned. That would eternally be mine.
I thought about her for a few moments more as I longed to be transported to somewhere in the world that was safe, and to hold her in my arms. She was smaller than me, and it felt good to be able to encompass her whole body in the reach of my arms, like I was able to protect her from an autumnal storm. I missed her smell, I missed the sound of her voice, I missed—
The blunt interruption of heavy, leather boots, clashing between the cold, armoured steel, brought my train of thought to a very abrupt conclusion.
The mutterings inside diminished rapidly, they became echoes in my mind, there to haunt me forever, just like everything else. The voices outside took over and became more excited and jittery as they heaved each other up. I traced their footsteps with my eyes as they began pacing themselves all over Doris. It was now that I realised how thin the armour really was. It was able to stop bullets, most of the time, but the clarity with which I could hear voices and footsteps alarmed me.
Maybe they weren’t even going to look in, maybe this was the only trophy they needed. I knew they would, I knew first-hand the sense of power and invincibility one got from standing on a tank, and their confidence would lead to them comfortably coming inside. My heart pounded, threatening to burst out of my chest once more as I worked myself up about the possibility of living and seeing my wife again.
My ears throbbed, as my eyes met Eric’s as he looked up from his prayer. His facial expression had changed. It was no longer one of fear and fright but of passion and determination. His eyes had changed too, they no longer spoke of a desolate despair and mournfulness, but of excitement as they zipped from side to side, as if everything that he was seeing was for the first time. He shifted energetically as he moved his hand silently to slide open one of the peep holes.
He looked across to the Lieutenant for his approval.
“Choose your moment,” he said with his eyes. Eric obliged, holding his position like a demented human statue, before reaching down again and inspecting his weapon. I could see from where I was perched that he had a full complement of brass rounds waiting patiently in his revolver. He clicked the cylinder so it lined up perfectly with the rest of the weapon. I hoped desperately that six rounds would be all he needed to rid us of the Germans that were now surrounding us.
The click was so startling it felt as if everything had stopped for Eric.
He glanced across at Lieutenant Harper and nodded, who gave a slight nod in return. He stood on the balls of his feet, bouncing around as if some demon was possessing him, but also slightly hunched over, his knees bent to get a good angle. He looked like a Jack in the box that had been wound up hours ago, without the final crank of the handle.
Slowly, he turned his head to face me. A smirk had formed on his face and as he nodded at me, he knew exactly what was about to happen. He was pumped up. He was so full of adrenaline and excitement that all sense of danger and perspective had clearly deserted him. I was slightly less confident in his actions, he was about to get us killed, no doubt about it.
Revolver in his right hand, he raised it, barrel pointing straight up and bought it up to about shoulder height. I could just see him line the fixed blade at the end of the weapon with the notch at the rear, slightly closing his left eye as he did so. With his left hand, he deliberately moved for the latch on the hole. With one swift flick of the wrist, he snapped it open.
A pause developed. It was as if Eric had opened the hatch to some children, playing joyfully on the tank, no care in the world about the war that enraged around them. Either that or there was more that he could see than we had expected. His face showed no signs of changing, he knew he was committed now. But whatever it was out there, it wasn’t children.
The pause was mutual, the Germans hadn’t fired a shot, not even a raised voice. Maybe they had been complacent, maybe they thought we had all been killed already. Or perhaps they were waiting for a small stick, a whiteish hanky tied to it in surrender. That would have been my expectation. The pause went on for too long, with Eric’s action only confirming our fates. Maybe we could have lived if he hadn’t given the game away.
The grotesque game of hide and seek was over, they had found us. There was no reciprocal round of this hide and seek, there was only one ending. Death. A twisted end to a harmless game.
Eric’s smirk was permanently stained on his face as he managed to fire off three rounds before I heard a heavy thump on the steel as a body collapsed and rolled its way down to the ground. Shouts leapt up from outside the tank, angry, aggressive shouts. The Lieutenant and I could do nothing other than sit and watch, and hope it would all end peacefully.
I could smell smoke, amongst the cordite, grease and death, the distinctive smell of cigarette smoke wafted its way through the opening. They had been complacent. I looked across at the Lieutenant, his revolver stared back at me, but his eyes were fixed obsessively on Eric. He was crouched down now, ready to step over the body of Eric and take his place, as he inevitably fell.
Three rounds was all Eric managed though, as a volley of bullets began thumping their way into Doris as Eric was catapulted to the ground by a lucky round that made its way through the opening. Rounds continued peppering in and around the hole, great twangs hopping around the inside, and the outside of Doris. I prayed for a ricochet or two that might fool them into thinking we were fighting back, and give us a stay of execution.
If anything, the rounds intensified. I felt as if a great, cast iron bucket had been placed over my head, while a hundred people threw pebbles and shook me within an inch of my life.
He lay on the floor of the tank, weapon raised in his right hand still, as his left clamped around the wound that had opened up on his upper arm. I peered curiously as I could see the individual layers of muscle, bright pink, protruding from under his fingers. Blood quickly seeped through the inadequate seal provided by his hand and the colour drained from the rest of his body. He paused as he took in the sudden change in circumstances.
I sensed the Lieutenant begin to move as he went to cover our opening. As he did so, I heard a number of boots leap off the tank, crunching their way round to the door. I turned, revolver slipping in my hand as I raised it to the hatch.
I glanced at Eric as the smirk quickly ran away from his face. His face had started to look clammy and ashen. His grip loosened on his wound and he let his left-hand fall to the floor. Blood ran from his hand as if the wound itself was on it, pooling into a small puddle rapidly. Slowly, he lowered his right arm, letting the revolver clatter to the ground, joining his arms.
He joined the rest of us, resigned to defeat, whatever form that defeat would come in. It didn’t take long for my question to be answered.
The Lieutenant stood straddling Eric, defiantly staring out of the hole, without his weapon raised. As he stood there a long rod poked its way through
the peep hole, only stopping once a gloved hand reached the entrance to the hole. They obviously weren’t too interested in keeping prisoners or having a trophy. Maybe they weren’t as young as we had anticipated. Perhaps they were hardened veterans of this war, all emotions linked to compassion and sympathy wiped from their minds.
We had just annihilated quite a few of their comrades. Three of us. We had piles of bodies lying outside, families now without brothers, sons, fathers, all of them plucked viciously from the world at a swift tug of a steel trigger. All callously decimated into fleshy confetti by a six-pound brass heavyweight as it slammed into the ground.
Maybe we deserved what was about to come to us. I felt hard done by all the same, we were only following orders, acting on inhibitions fuelled by propaganda from above. I let out a sigh as what felt like minutes ticked by, the deathly rod teasing us as it hung there, above Lieutenant Richard Harper. The rattling at the door subsided and Eric’s wheezing as he struggled for breath was the only sound that I could focus on now.
As a faint hiss sparked up, I turned my body and pressed my face into the cooling steel wall, throwing my arms around my side and closed myself off from the rest of the tank. I braced myself for the end, trying to limit the pain I would feel in some small way.
The hiss grew louder and as a more ferocious growl bellowed, it was Eric’s scream of agony that I heard first, unintelligible curse words howling from his mouth. The low growl continued, the searing heat quickly reaching me as the tank rapidly became like a perverted kettle. I wanted desperately to turn and observe what was happening, wanting to aid my comrades as they died.
I resisted and, clenching my eyes, I braced myself for the incredible pain that was to come.
11
6th June 1944
01.32 hours
His story had ended there. He had nothing more to tell me. In between the weeping sobs I could make out the names of men who he had crewed with, men he had lived with, but they were no longer men, just mere memories.
I would never know if he had been the only survivor. I would never know how he made it out of that tank alive. My father had told all of his story that he could. What I did know, is that, in amongst the great gulps for air that he took, a few words snuck from his mouth, as if they’d disobeyed an order to stay inside his head.
“They aren’t all evil, Johnny.”
As my mother began hurrying into the room, my memory began to fade, and I was brought back to the present, the sound of her feet shuffling on the floorboards, replaced by the sounds of men waiting to die. I couldn’t help but think of my situation. I had seen men killed, decimated, transformed beyond all recognition in the name of what? A war to end all wars? My father’s war would end nothing, neither would mine, in fact it would probably just fuel wars for years to come.
The unborn generation, the generation I had directed so much anger and hatred towards before, now got my wholehearted compassion. They hadn’t seen their first daylight yet and it had already been decided that it would be them who fought in the next war. They would fight against larger armies, weapons more powerful and more destructive than the ones that went before, and they would undoubtedly experience death on a much larger scale than ever before.
I wondered what I would look like after my war. Was this it for me? Would I see it through this battle and move on to another mission? Would I make it through that one? I wondered what I would look like if I made it to the other end of my war.
I prayed desperately that I wouldn’t end up like my father, physically broken and harmed for life, needing a strong whisky to numb the pain, and then needing another one to prevent the memories, the nightmares of war. I subdued my tears, as I selfishly thought of myself. I already had death and destruction burned into my mind. I was already emotionally deformed.
I took in a deep drag of my cigarette and shuffled the Bren gun resting neatly on my pile of sandbags. The sky was still a midnight blue, as if it had been stained with a dye, just tarnished here and there with darkened clouds. The smell of cordite and death hung forebodingly in the air, while a padre ran around, reading last rites to the wounded, and blessing those of us still alive.
The clouds rolled by swiftly, every now and then passing over the moon and forcing us into a darkness.
The French civilian had begun distributing food and wine, he was celebrating. We had stopped the celebrating for now, the easiest part was over. We waved and shook hands with the man and his family, but that was as far as this liberation party went for us. Every now and then someone would give him a patronising embrace, mixed with a ‘Keep your voice down’ type of handshake. We had taken the bridge with complete surprise, but now they had had time to reorganise and revaluate, we were all in grave danger.
Still, we didn’t turn the bread and the wine down, the ration packs we had been issued might have to last us another week and we didn’t know when we might be resupplied. Besides, the wine was good.
Charlie was back by my side. His lower leg was now a darkened brown rather than khaki, and I could tell that the bandage had already begun to fuse to the skin, compensating for the pockmarks of holes that lay beneath. I didn’t want to be around when they peeled that off him. He grimaced as the pain of breathing continued to cause him discomfort, and he tugged at the bandage that occupied his arm.
His uniform was ripped and torn, his smock displaying proudly where the snagging wire had ensnared him.
His Sten was rested on top of the sandbags, pointing towards the crossroads, but he was slumped up against our mini fortress, his back facing the same way as his weapon. He looked solemn, locked in his own thoughts, staring at the ground. He twiddled with his fingers for a while, intertwining them with one another before yanking them apart.
I was terrified. They were on their way back, more men would be available to them, heavier weapons. I needed to prepare for death once more.
Despite this, knowing Charlie was sat next to me comforted me. In the short time I had been without him, I had missed him. We’d been together for quite a while. We’d shared a billet when we had been training and got to know each other well. There was no way of being shy with a group of other men if you have to share a toilet with one another for more than twenty-four hours. In fact, it had been more like ten minutes with Charlie and sharing a toilet with him was an experience of war within itself.
He poked his finger down his bandage and began to itch. I hadn’t liked him at first, he hadn’t liked me. He thought I was too young, despite being a similar age. I thought he was stuck up. He thought I was cocky. I thought he was boring.
He especially couldn’t stand the way that I liked to free things up. American chocolate bars, cigarettes, alcohol, you name it and it always managed to find its way to me, and naturally I would offer them up to everyone in the billet, for a price. He had seemed to think that by association, he too would end up in hot water if anyone found out.
Before too long I was found out though, Captain Howarth had approached me to see if I could lay my hands on some American alcohol for a dinner party he was hosting. Through clever negotiation I ended up with three bottles, which placed me firmly in the Captain’s good books, even though he only ended up with two bottles, and a promise to turn a blind eye to my mischievous hands.
Not a week later and Charlie was trading goods with me.
I could tell he was thinking about Christine, his body language gave him away. His shoulders would always slump, his head would bow so much his chin would meet with his chest and his arms would rest on the back of his neck. He did it unconsciously, but everyone knew to leave him well alone when he adopted that position.
He was always melancholic when he thought of Christine, at least he was when he was with us, always counting down the days to when he would get to see her again. He was one of the only blokes in the regiment who was actually married. Everyone else, considered themselves far too young for that sort of thing, and set about having as much fun as they possibly could, and gett
ing into as much trouble as they could find.
I felt desperately sorry for him, even though he, in actual fact, felt no worse than me.
I was surrounded by men, my companions, all roughly the same age as me, all in the same boat. But I found it difficult to believe that even half of them were feeling the same way as me, but I knew it to be true.
They all pined for home, they all longed to be reunited with their loved ones. We all had a bond, a union, a sense of togetherness that now we had entered into it, could not be broken merely by bombs and bullets.
But I felt so alone. So awfully alone. A nagging feeling that I did not have what the others had, something that I had imposed upon myself but dreaded that I would regret it. Every time I thought about it, it would send a chill rushing all over my body, a chill that threatened to push the hairs on my arms up, and through my jacket.
I had lied to them, woven a tale of deceitful dishonesty, told them stories that had shaped an image in their minds. I was a good, loyal, wholesome individual, a young man with a woman waiting patiently at home for me.
I had met her at school, our families were friends and we had grown up together. We grew together as we developed through adolescence before we finally realised that the feelings we had for each other were the strong, magnetic pulls of love.
We had become sweethearts, and so I distanced myself from the daily ritual of heading into town to link up with some of the local girls. I would sit quietly, nursing a drink, observing the way the liquid would slosh around and mould to the shape of the glass. Always, with Charlie by my side.
I would contemplate life, reminisce of past times, my childhood, my parents, my friends.