by Thomas Wood
Suddenly, a pair of boots squealed to a halt right next to my ear, squeaking carelessly as the occupant crouched down beside me.
I froze.
There was nothing I could do but let him stare at me, hoping that my chest wouldn’t move or twitch as I tried earnestly to hold my breath in. I could feel his breath on the side of my cheek as he squatted next to me and his warm skin wrapped its way around mine as he began hoisting my arm up. I let it dangle in his hand, a complete deadweight, pretending that it no longer belonged to me, no longer was attached to a living body. I forgot completely about breathing and instead began to wipe my mind of all thoughts, in an attempt to improve my audition at playing the dead man.
I let him be my puppeteer, he could do what he wanted with me, as long as he eventually left me alone, left me alive. The smoke of his cigarette began settling in my nostrils and I had to resist every attempt to breathe it in, or expel it, especially as it began to tickle at the hairs that lined the inside of my nose. I wondered if he was doing it on purpose, like he knew that I was alive and all he was doing was waiting to see how long I could last before revealing myself to him.
My lungs began to ache as they screamed for air, feeling like something was being pressed down on them, hard. The pain grew to a crescendo, like a branding iron was being pushed hard into my chest, to the point where all I wanted to do, all I could think of doing, was screaming; screaming and crying for my mother.
If only she could see me now, she would be both horrified and delighted. She had been one of the biggest advocates for the ‘I told you so’ pressure groups her whole life. You fell out of the tree and hurt yourself? I told you so. You answered back to your teacher and got a wallop? I told you so.
You joined the army and got yourself killed? I told you so.
If only I had listened to her, if only I had taken her advice, then I could have done something useful for the war, I could have done something that meant that I wouldn’t have died a cowardly death in some unknown part of France, where my body might never be found. I felt so intensely stupid as I played dead in that forest, that I almost gave the game away by simply bursting into tears at my own ineptitude.
I felt the heat of the glowing cigarette end slowly burning into my face as he spat it from his mouth, letting it just brush against my ear as it came to rest, close enough that I could feel it, but far away enough that it didn’t cause me to scream out in agony as my flesh was burned away.
The cigarette was no longer a concern to him, his full attention was now on the corpse of the British officer who was laid stretched out at his feet, his arm in his hand.
Both of his hands suddenly gripped my wrist, they were large, quite rough and, without looking at the man, would have said that he wouldn’t have looked too out of place in a farm field, toiling hard over the crops in all manner of weather and times. But I tried to hate him, I tried to stop giving him a face and a life, I didn’t want to feel like I had a connection with him or that he might have emotions of his own. He was the enemy, he had killed so many of my friends and my men and now, here he was, testing me, teasing me, to see if I was alive.
But it suddenly dawned on me that my breathing, or lack of it, was of no concern to him, he was robbing me. He wrenched at the watch on my wrist with no finesse or logic to it, just wrestling with me to get it off. Eventually, he worked out the intricacies of the leather strap and the watch came free of my wrist whereupon he immediately released my arm and let it thump limply back into the soil.
It did not take long for the squeaking leather to resume as he trotted off to catch up with the rest of his comrades, as he now called out to them about his latest plundering of the war. The boots subsided into nothing, until it was just me once more, all alone with just the breeze as my company.
I was still alive, but I might as well have been dead. I had no one around me to help, I had no weapon, no watch and very rapidly, I was losing all sense of hope and optimism.
I lay in a moment of contemplation for a while longer, mulling over what had happened and what could have happened, as I simultaneously let the ache in my lungs slowly disappear and the stuffiness in my ears reduce itself to nothing more than an odd twinge.
I scratched at the dried blood that was stuck to the side of my face, letting the brown matter collect under the surface of my fingernails, along with all the other gunk and grime that had settled under them for the last few days. Hauling myself to my feet, I continued to scratch and scrape at the rest of the blood under my nose and brushed myself of the dirt that had been thrown upon me by the mortars.
I made no effort to hide my noise as my boots thumped solemnly into the ground, it was as if part of me really did want to be caught and the other half of me just couldn’t be bothered to correct myself. I buckled over and hit the floor for the thousandth time since leaving my tank, as I felt the blunt object withdraw from the backs of my legs. No sooner had I hit the deck than I felt a heavy body spread itself over my back, knees on either side of my head, the unmistakeable point of a bayonet being pressed firmly, but forgivingly, into the back of my neck.
His aroma was incredible, a mixture of urine, vomit and the undeniable perfume of death was all that encompassed my thoughts as he began hissing in my ear, the crushing weight on my chest too much for my recovering lungs.
“Who are you?”
I felt the pressure on my back alleviate somewhat as he realised that he was slowly killing me. Saliva splashed over my face as he repeated his question, met only with a childlike whimpering as I struggled to get any words out. For a brief moment, I felt a resurgence of energy and I felt like fighting back, but I knew it would be pointless; he had the upper hand and anyway, my body was slowly giving up on me, as was my mind.
“You English?” I knew that I should have been comforted by the fact that what I was hearing was an English voice, but instead, all I could do was resign myself to death, regardless of who it was at the hands of.
“Y-yes…English.”
“Name,” he growled, seemingly even more angry at the discovery of being the same nationality as one another.
“Alf…Alf Lewis. Lieutenant. Fourth Royal Tanks.”
I must have convinced him of my true identity, or his regard for an officer’s rank was still intact, as the cold steel of the bayonet was calmly removed from my neck, the crushing weight of the man lifted as he rolled over to one side.
He began to pant harder than I had ever heard anyone pant before, a small squealing wheeze accompanying every expiration of breath, the panting gradually turning into uncontrollable sobs. I didn’t know what to do, even if I had known, I didn’t have the energy to do anything anyway.
We lay there for a few hours, enjoying the company of a fellow soldier, before either of us said anything.
“I’m hurt,” he whispered into the darkness, like two brothers lying side by side with the threat of their parent’s wrath if they were heard, “can you help? They put my own bayonet through my arm.”
I ripped at the tunic of a nearby body and wound it, so it became a like a thin bandage, before I tied it tightly around his upper arm, immediately absorbing a copious amount of blood into its fibres.
“That’ll have to do now. We have to move.”
“Where are we going?” His question had no answer, it had had no answer for days now, but it felt like the right thing to do, to move. It made me feel better when it felt like I was doing something about my situation, even if it did mean that I was walking straight towards the enemy.
“What’s your name?”
“Jimmy…Jimmy Burmingham.”
“Nice to meet you, Jimmy.”
“Yeah…you too I suppose.”
21
I assessed yet another situation that would have seemed inconceivable to me a mere matter of days ago. I was in a sorry, helpless state, just like I had been for the last few days but, whatever was going on, I wasn’t dead yet, and that was always a bonus to me now.
I watche
d him as he nervously shifted his grip around the revolver being held at hip height, pointing straight into the pit of my stomach. If his finger slipped and he pulled the trigger, it was going to make one almighty mess of my insides and I would be in for a very slow, painful death as the life slowly dripped out of me.
The moonlight momentarily peered through the clouds boldly and made its way through the covering of trees that surrounded us, lighting up his face for me to get a proper look at. He was drenched in sweat, every inch of his face sparkled, and each bead glinted in the light that lit them up like diamonds. More sweat rushed down his face from under the rim of his helmet as he tilted it upwards slightly.
From where we had observed the group, they had looked confident, like they knew what was going on and what was being asked of them. They had a fire lit in the middle of the clearing that now crackled away just over to my half left, the remnants of which was doing no favours to the sweat soaked, revolver wielding man in front of me. The sweating man wore a British uniform, he had the same Brodie helmet that we had all been issued but, against the silhouette of the fire, we hadn’t been able to work out what the others had all been wearing. Now, it was clear, they were all in civvy clothes. We had watched them for some time as they ate and drank together, before we finally made the decision to make our presence known and, advance our way into the British camp, hands on head in a show of passivity.
The revolver had been pointed at us not five seconds after that, the gaping barrel looming large and being the only thing that I could focus on thereafter.
His breathing was heavy and rancid but controlled as he manged to steady his revolver holding hand, readying himself to fire, to kill.
As I prepared once again to die, the uncontrollable urge to itch at my skin, as my sweat-dampened tunic rubbed over it became unbearable.
The officer grunted something as he looked over his shoulder and the rifles that had been aimed in our general direction were slung back over shoulders, but the boring eyes continued to take aim at us, never blinking or deviating away, not even for a second.
The man took a step forward, bringing himself closer to us and clearing up some of his facial features in the light of the moon. He was a rat-faced man, the sort of face that becomes associated with distrust the first time you clap eyes on it, all features on it were pointed and abrupt, the kind that would say one thing to your face, but another as soon as your back turned. I hated him immediately.
He had deep valleys that ran from the corners of his eyes that seemed to spread across his whole face like cobwebs. I could make out a large scab that had formed over his left cheek, bumpy and brittle, and he had obviously been picking away at the edges for some time now as a large proportion of the scab had fallen away, revealing a layer of delicate skin that had formed underneath.
As his arm came closer to my body, I realised that he was wearing an old khaki jacket, not the kind that would have normally been issued to us. His ranks were on his sleeve rather than on his shoulders where I would have expected them to have been. This man was wearing a British Captain’s jacket from the Great War era, the kind my own father would have worn, and I couldn’t quite work out why that would have been.
Maybe he had been an officer in the first war and had been left behind in No Man’s Land, completely forgotten. Or maybe he had escaped from Britain at some point to fight for the Germans. It was even possible that he had been captured during the first war and had stayed in Germany, only being released now to wreak havoc on a retreating British Army. Either way, his uniform and insignia was not to be trusted, especially judging by the fact that there was a revolver pointed squarely at me.
I tried to look around me, without wanting to attract too much of his attention, trying to look for a way out, a break somewhere in the circle that had begun to form around us. Most of the boys around us looked the same age as this Captain, in their mid to late forties, with similar facial features of wrinkled foreheads and greying hair. One or two though, were my age, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four at the most. None of them looked German, neither did they look British.
He must have sensed my confusion at the situation for he began bellowing.
“Yes!” he cried, “We are fighting with the Germans! We were promised so much by our governments after the last war, and what did we receive? Nothing!” Disgruntled voices started muttering in agreement all around us and I wondered whether we were being held captive or at some sort of political rally.
“We are fed up of being ignored. The only ones that would sort that for us are the Nazi party and the Führer who will soon have the whole of Europe in his hands. And then we can all return home.” His last sentence was performed almost wistfully, like he longed for a Nazi controlled Britain, one in which, presumably, he would be one of the aristocracy, propelled up through the ranks by his unwavering loyalty to the ruling power.
He stared straight into my eyes for a few seconds, awaiting a response, which he was never going to get.
“You aren’t thinking of running away now, are you Lieutenant?”
He looked around mockingly for a response, which was met by a small obedient tittering that whispered itself from the watching crowd. He had managed to read my mind.
“If you run, you’d get nowhere my boy, you know that?” He began waving the revolver around nonchalantly, like it was some sort of toy that wasn’t able to blow a man’s brains out.
His sadistic smile continued as he deliberately turned his head to look straight into Jimmy’s eyes.
“And what about you? What are you planning to do?” He said, sneeringly as his loyal crowd began to chuckle from the darkness.
“I’ll just follow your orders, Sir.” Jimmy stuttered, and I couldn’t quite work out if he was trying to play the man in front of him, show him some sort of pseudo-respect, or whether he had become a genuine convert of the leering rat-faced, sweat-soaked man in front of him.
Rat Face snorted, the smile evaporating from his face faster than a charging midnight express train.
“And what if…” he said, looking around at his loyal followers once more, “…what if I told you to drop down dead?”
We both stood, staring at the Captain, not really knowing what was going to happen next. I half expected him to burst out into raucous laughter and encourage all of his cronies to do likewise. But he continued to stare at Jimmy for a minute longer, as if he was truly anticipating some sort of answer from him.
My question was answered in a sudden flash as I felt the warm blood spit itself over the left-hand side of my body, instinctively flicking my head in the opposite direction to protect myself from being showered in more blood. Immediately, the thick liquid and bits of brain matter that had stuck itself to my face, began to trickle downwards, down my neck and under the layers of my clothes.
It seemed like it was only after I noticed all these things that I finally felt the pressure wave of the bullet and the ear popping bang of the revolver as it relieved itself of a round. I felt like falling to my knees in an act of total submission, in the hope that this man might spare my life and accept me into his band of bloodthirsty men. But I knew that the possibilities of that happening were finer than slim, from where I was standing, this man had no prisoners to speak of and I had a funny feeling that he was not in the game of keeping to the Geneva Convention.
I only had one option now, there was nothing else that I could do, nothing else that would give me even a slither of hope of survival except for this.
My eyes narrowed as I focussed in on his revolver, blocking out his gang who were ogling at what their master had done, no sense even of Rat Face himself, it became about me and the revolver and nothing else.
I heard the shouting and the sound of birds suddenly scared into flight by the bang, but I didn’t take notice of it, it was all blocked out as surplus to me.
The dull steel had a smart smattering of blood and brain over the barrel, soiling its appearance somewhat, but glinting brightly in the moo
nlight, proud of its latest achievement. The chamber had already swivelled around, lining up the round that had been earmarked for me no doubt.
He began to rotate his whole body so that it faced me, as he did so, I realised that his watch had stopped ticking, entertaining myself with the thought that he might stop to wind it up before he squeezed the trigger of the revolver for a second time. I wondered if it had been bought off my German mugger and whether it had been taken from a British soldier or one of our other Allies, highly doubting that a man such as this would actually stop to purchase his own jewellery when he could have just as easily, and cheaply, stolen someone else’s.
I became transfixed on the guard that encircled the trigger of the gun, watching his hand closely. For a moment, he released the pressure on the trigger so much that the pad of his finger came off the steel completely, that was my sign.
I moved hard and fast, hoping that the sudden movement and burst of aggression would take him by complete surprise and throw him off completely, maybe even dropping the weapon. No matter what happened now, I was dead regardless, so if I could even injure this detestable, rat-faced man, then that would be a bonus.
I forced the pad of my index finger in and tightly behind the trigger of the revolver, grazing the rest of my finger on the sharp steel of the gun as I negotiated my way in. The steel was icy cold, but I could also feel the sweat-saturated heat that was pulsating from the Captain’s body as he began to fight back against what I was doing.
Shifting my gaze from the gun up to his eyes, I took great delight to see that the smile that had been etched into his face had gone completely, as he realised that his captive was retaliating for killing his comrade.