by Richard Ayre
We split into a pincer shape, me and half-a-dozen men on one side, Johnson and his men on the other. We jumped up and ran towards the house. A couple of Germans popped up as we closed down the distance, but they were thrown backwards instantly from the fire from myself and my men. I don’t think either of them got a shot off.
I sprinted to the side of the house and slammed into the wall, glancing around the corner to see Johnson and his men in position. So far so good.
The doorway beside me suddenly burst open and sprouted grey-jacketed infantry followed by a crackle of fire. One of the Germans went down but the other snapped off a shot that rebounded off the wall and hit me in the calf.
Ignoring the sudden pain I limped on, firing at the German until he crumpled in the doorway. We rushed it when we heard the crack of grenades from inside as Johnson and his men chucked them through the embrasure at the front of the house.
Smoke billowed as we entered and we shot at anything that moved in the murk, shadowy bodies throwing up their arms and going down. One of them screamed loudly and then choked into silence.
And that was it. It was over before it had really started. It was suddenly very quiet, although we could still hear firing coming from the other houses that lined the beach as more soldiers fought on.
As the smoke cleared, we checked that all of the Germans inside were dead. Their glazed eyes stared at us while we swept the interior for any more danger.
Johnson and his men came in, Johnson asking me something in a strangely muted voice.
I frowned as I couldn’t really hear him. The noise from the explosions had temporarily deafened me.
‘I asked how your leg is?’ he shouted.
I glanced down and saw blood was soaking the bottom of the left leg of my uniform trousers.
‘It’ll be fine by tomorrow, sir,’ I yelled back at him, moderating my voice as he winced. He frowned at my words.
One of the men knelt down beside my leg and sliced at the material, applying a field dressing to the wound.
Johnson was saying something about getting me to safety, but I ignored him.
‘I’m fine, sir, honestly. I want to go on.’
He shrugged and patted me on the shoulder. There wasn’t really anywhere safe to put me anyway. We moved on.
The fortifications fell one by one. Men died on both sides. Johnson himself was shot in the head ten minutes after our brief conversation and his brains were scattered bright and red across the road as we crouched and ran and shot.
He was a decent sort, was Johnson. A bit remote, but a good officer. He was left lying in the street with the other dead bodies as we moved rapidly forward.
We pressed on, my leg healing by the minute. By evening, although we had not joined up with the Yanks as planned because the carnage at Omaha was abysmal, we had joined forces with some Canadian troops from Juno beach and we rolled into Arromanches in the early evening. We spent the night re-grouping and trying to rest, for the next day we would be attempting to take Bayeux.
During this brief respite, in the middle of the night I took myself around a corner away from prying eyes and removed the field dressing from my leg. The bullet from the German rifle fell with a tinkle to the road.
The wound had completely healed.
We took Bayeux the next day. The day after that we took another town. And another. We slowly pushed at the Germans from the West as the Russians pushed at them from the East.
Men were losing their lives every day.
But the Germans were on the run.
XIV
It was on the twenty-seventh of June when my luck changed and I have to say, even with what I went through, it changed in the most wonderful way. It was a day that truly showed me what my strange body could do, and a day that was the harbinger of pain like I had never imagined. But ultimately it also led me to Madeleine, which was worth everything I suffered. On the twenty-seventh of June, 1944, I was shot in the head.
I never saw the man who shot me. One rarely does. We had entered Cherbourg: pushing, pushing, pushing. We’d had barely any time for sleep and my men and I were battle weary, stinking and bearded.
I was standing in what I thought was a decently defended position, at the end of a road behind the corner of a house. We knew the main German force was holed up in the buildings at the far end of the road and the junction down there was protected by a Panzer tank. Its barrel glared down the road at us malevolently. My men were lined up behind me, awaiting my orders as I peered carefully around the corner at the Panzer. We could hear small arms fire echoing around the town.
I had just turned back to Connors, my corporal, to give him my thoughts when my vision erupted in a white flash and the most immense pain I have ever felt seared through my head. Then the world disappeared.
My memory of that time is very broken, even more so than when I was shot in World War One and after being stabbed by Mickey Donovan. Everything was fractured. Nothing made any sense. The past and present were mixed together in a maelstrom of images and feelings and smells and it seemed to go on forever.
I saw Molly, lying naked and ready on her settee in New York, whilst Mickey kissed Grace in the corner before plunging his knife into her stomach. Hector appeared at various times, jumping up at Jane Godley and ruining her dress. Greene then turned up and she stuck a knife into him. The Medic stood in the background and laughed. Nothing made sense.
My thoughts did not connect properly. I dreamed and hallucinated. Bright sparks and strobing lights flashed on and off in an incessant, jumbled kaleidoscope of feelings and images, and I knew there was something very wrong with me but I didn’t know what it was or even what wrong really meant.
I would worry about it for a while and then forget it. I would start along a train of thought before it wobbled and faded, and I would forget it until the thread was picked up minutes or days or weeks later. I was in a purgatorial state: never resting but never awake, always aware of something but not knowing what that something was.
I heard sounds that made no sense. Saw images I could not explain. I was going mad and I screamed, but I couldn’t move my mouth. The threads of my thoughts would not complete the circuit. They were too short. It was as if I didn’t have all the parts I needed to connect them together. As if something was missing.
But slowly those threads seemed to start making more sense. My vision, which had been black to the world, began to work once more: blurry at first but slowly coming back into focus. Pain seared through me again and again, then slowly faded away. My ears began to pick up sounds. My fingers and toes began to heed the commands my strengthening mind gave them. I began to think again.
My eyes snapped open.
She was the first thing I saw. The reason why getting shot in the head was such a good thing.
My angel. My one true love. My Madeleine.
She jumped back when she saw me gazing at her. But then she smiled at me and it was as if the sun had come out.
‘Hello,’ I whispered in French, because I knew she was French. I’d heard her talking to me at some point, telling me what the day had brought. I remembered it now although I had not understood the noises before as I’d slept. As I had recovered.
She frowned in disbelief, swallowing hard, as if she were frightened by my words. Her reaction reminded me of Sister Clara at the church of St Theresa Marie.
‘Hello,’ she eventually answered. She stared at me in wonder. ‘Do you feel alright?’
I nodded. The movement caused a little pain, like a receding hangover, but that was all.
‘Where am I?’ I asked.
‘You are still in Cherbourg. You were wounded. Can you remember?’
I nodded again. ‘I was hit in the head, I think.’
She frowned again. ‘I’ll fetch the doctor. I think he’ll want to see you.’
She smiled again and then left. I was in some sort of hospital room: white walls, equipped only with the bed I lay in and a wash basin near the window. I tried t
o see what lay outside the window but could make out nothing but grey sky from the bed, so I pulled back the covers.
I swung my legs to the floor and paused as the room swayed around me. When it stopped, and after a couple of attempts, I pushed myself to my feet. The room swayed again and I placed a hand on the wall. Soon, though, I felt strong enough to try and walk to the window.
My left leg felt numb and it dragged slightly, as if it were not fully connected to my brain’s commands, but I managed to limp to the window and looked out.
I was standing above a town square. It looked cold and rainy outside. Across from the building I was in was another, more ornate, building that looked like a town hall. American and British flags hung limply from a large balcony.
I turned back and went across to the sink on the wall. I looked into the mirror, frowning at what I saw.
My lips were cracked and chapped, as if they had not had enough moisture, and a bandage was wrapped around my head. My face seemed very thin and my beard seemed very thick. I had no idea how long it would have taken me to grow that beard for the simple fact that I had always been clean-shaven, but it looked like it would have taken a while.
The sound of a door opening made me turn and I was confronted by a young man in a doctor’s coat. He stared at me in astonishment.
‘My God, he muttered. He had an American accent. After a moment he roused himself from his shock. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he all but shouted at me. ‘What the hell are you doing out of bed?’
The woman I had first seen was behind him and I now realised she wore a white nurse’s uniform. They both came to me and led me back to the bed. The doctor stared.
‘Where am I?’ I asked. ‘Where is this place?’
The doctor seemed lost for words still, but he finally moved and pulled a stool from beneath the bed and sat beside me. ‘What do you remember?’ he finally asked.
I frowned, trying to come up with the information he required.
‘I remember being in the street. There was a tank. I remember a white light and a pain in my head. Then nothing until I woke up here. How long have I been here?’
The doctor seemed to wonder where to start, then shrugged to himself. ‘You were shot,’ he explained, ignoring my request. ‘In the head. You were brought to us on the evening of the 27th of June, after the town was liberated.’
I opened my mouth to ask a question, but he held up a hand and continued.
‘Your wound was… bad. The bullet entered your head, here.’ He indicated to his temple. ‘And exited here.’ He pointed to the top of his head. ‘Your skull was blown apart. Half your brains were missing. We know this because we tried to operate on it. You were still alive, you see, when you should have been dead. That’s why your men waited until the evening to bring you here. They only went back to you after the town had been cleared, to collect your body. They naturally thought you were gone.’
He stood up and went to the window I had just been gazing out of. ‘It’s now November twenty-first. You’ve been unconscious for almost five months.’
I stared at him. Five months!
Of course I knew what had happened, although I could barely believe the truth of it. My brain had been destroyed by the bullet, my skull blasted away. It had taken five months to recover because it was such a huge wound.
I remembered the flashing, disjointed images and sounds that had flitted through my mind as I lay unconscious. Time had meant nothing and the broken thoughts must have been the result of my brain mending itself, knitting itself back together. Rebuilding itself.
I thought back to my fears on the beach at Dunkirk about what it would take to make me die and the old realisation came back, magnified a million times over. I could not be killed!
‘We want to take more x-rays,’ the doctor continued. ‘I want to know how you’ve survived something that should have killed you, or at the very least should have left you little more than a vegetable.’
I nodded, knowing that, as I was still in the army and that this must have been a military hospital, I had no choice. But I also believed all they would find was a few marks that looked like old wounds. I believed my brain would be completely normal.
The doctor then gently unwound the bandages, nodding to himself as if he knew what he would find.
‘We’ve changed the bandages regularly, of course,’ he muttered as he did so. ‘We’ve seen your bone and the flesh healing. We just didn’t know how your brain would be affected. As you’re so keen to be out of bed, why don’t you take a look?’ He indicated for me to stand and look in the mirror.
My hair had grown back a little where they had obviously shaved it, and the only thing I could see was a small scar at my right temple. I rubbed the crown of my head and felt a small ridge, about four inches long. I tapped my skull with a forefinger and the doctor winced.
‘What’s going on in the war?’ I asked him.
He shook his head in mute disbelief. ‘I hear you speak French?’ he asked in return.
I nodded and he indicated the young woman.
‘Nurse Besson will fill you in on the details.’
He looked at me once more, shook his head again, then left.
‘Please,’ I said to the nurse. ‘How is the war going?’
Hesitantly at first, she filled me in. Paris had been liberated, as had the whole of Belgium, and the Allied forces were now massed at the Rhine. She had no other real news. The Germans were being tenacious. It would take a long time to finish the job. So, it was still not over. My work was still not completed.
‘I need to find my battalion,’ I told her. I looked around the room. ‘Where’s my uniform?’
She stared at me as if I were mad.
*
But I never returned to the fighting. The young American doctor, Bennett, would hear none of it. He wrote to Allied Command, telling them of my survival but also making it clear that the wounds I had received meant I could not return to active service. I don’t know if Mrs Taylor back in Aylesford ever heard anything about it or not.
Over the next few months—as well as dispensing with the slight limp, one of the last remnants of my wound—I received an honourable discharge from His Majesty’s Armed Forces. It was in the name of William Taylor, of course, but it meant my second and hopefully final war was over.
As well as I felt, I was still not back to full strength. I was thin from intravenous feeding and my muscles were weak. I still suffered from the odd blinding headache as my brain continued to get better. It seemed this wound was one that would take time to heal completely. I couldn’t rush it.
However, by late January 1945 I was completely back to normal. Bennett conducted test after test on my skull and brain functions but found nothing out of the ordinary. He said he would have to call in experts to find out why I had recovered so completely. I wasn’t that bothered. I spent a lot of time with Nurse Madeleine Besson and, as my body healed itself, she somehow began to heal my soul from the raging black hate that had filled it for years. She began to cure me. She began to make me human again.
Over our time together at the hospital, as we became closer, she eventually told me about her past and it was a terrible story to hear.
She was from Caen and had worked as a nurse. She had been married for four years when the Germans invaded. Her husband, unable to contain his hatred for his enemies, had joined the Resistance, leaving Madeleine with her family. She had only recently found out that he had died under interrogation by the Gestapo three years before and so she never even got to bury his body. She and her mother and younger brother had watched the German tanks and infantry march through the streets of Caen, and those years had been hard as the rationing and occupation took effect. Madeleine said she was pleased her husband was already gone by then, because she believed he would have done something stupid like attacking the tanks with a spade or something. She smiled sadly as she remembered him.
Her mother had died during those years. Never a hea
lthy woman, she had succumbed to an unknown disease and not even Madeleine’s nursing skills could save her. Maybe if they’d had access to the latest drugs and treatments she would have survived, but of course they didn’t. They only had their rations and whatever Madeleine could beg or borrow from her neighbours.
Madeleine and her brother had buried her and then lived on the reduced rations allowed by the Germans. One night, a group of drunken Waffen SS men from a tank battalion had broken into their house. They had raped Madeleine and beaten her teenage brother to such an extent that he had died of his wounds.
After that, Madeleine began to give up. She was never molested again physically but her life was ruptured, as was her spirit. She worked like an automaton in the hospital in Caen, saving the lives of the Germans she now hated, until the Allied forces had liberated it. It was Doctor Bennett who had asked her to come to Cherbourg, as they needed trained nurses there, and she had gone as there was nothing left for her in her home town. She really had no choice.
At only thirty-three Madeleine was a broken woman: widowed, orphaned, and alone. Her cheerful demeanour at work hid her inner despair. But, perversely, she told me that her duties at the military hospital helped her to at least begin to come to terms with what had happened to her family and her country.
I closed my eyes in desperation as she told me of her life, emotions I hadn’t known for years surfacing. Her presence brought me a peace I had never really known before, and it extinguished and nullified the feelings of hate that had pulsed through me for so long. Madeleine made me smile. She made me feel again, and she at first soothed then quenched my selfish anger. Madeleine made me better. She fixed me.
This didn’t happen all at once, of course. It came about over many months and many meetings. I don’t think she ever told anyone else about her past. Maybe she thought of me as different because I had survived something that should have killed me, just like her. We were both totally alone and had both been through hell in our different ways.
We were about to go through even more.
