by Pat Kelleher
“Come on, Porgy. Face it. You lost out. Best man and all that, eh? Come and sit down,” said Atkins.
“If he hurts her…” he muttered, tearing viciously with his teeth at the chunk of meat in his hands.
“My God,” said Atkins, the truth dawning on him. “This isn’t just about your deck of cards is it? You’re actually serious about this one, aren’t you?” The helpless look in Porgy’s eyes said it all. “Look, he’s crippled. What’s he going to do, stand on her foot with his crutch? Come back to the campfire.”
Atkins guided a reluctant Porgy back to where the rest of their section sat. After a while Half Pint turned the conversation to the thing that was on all their minds.
“What if we never get back? We’re marooned here, I tell you. This,” he said with a sweep of his arm, “is it and we’d better make the most of it.”
“No, I don’t believe that, I can’t believe that,” said Porgy. “Whatever brought us here might send us back just as quickly; the officers must think so too, why else do you think they’ve kept us on this stinking pile of mud?”
“Hope?” said Gazette. “But I don’t think we can depend on miracles. If there’s a way back I reckon we’re going to have to find it ourselves.”
“And what if there isn’t a way back?” challenged Half Pint.
“We got here didn’t we?” said Mercy angrily.
“Someone must be responsible. I say we find them and make them send us back,” said Ketch.
“If there is someone, why did they bring us, what are we here for?” asked Gutsy.
“Do you really want to go back to the Somme?” said Half Pint.
“No,” said Pot Shot. “I want to go back to my family.”
A woman’s horrified scream cut off the murmurs of assent.
Porgy was the first to jump and grab his rifle from the tee-pee of arms, causing the others to clatter to the ground.
“That bloody bastard. I knew it. If he’s harmed her—” he said as he dashed off into the dark past other men, now standing up from the campfires and looking out into the night.
Atkins grabbed a rifle and ran after him, weaving between the fires and the muttering troops. Reaching the edge of the mud flat Atkins jumped the three or four feet to the plain and, without breaking step, ran on after Porgy toward the small copse of trees not twenty yards from the mud.
The screaming continued hysterically.
Atkins made it to the trees to find Porgy standing silhouetted against the light from a hurricane lantern hanging on a low bough. He rounded Porgy, accidentally standing on a discarded crutch as he did so. Then he saw Edith kneeling on the ground, her apron and nurse’s uniform drenched in blood. The headless body of Corporal Sandford lay sprawled across her lap, blood now only gently pulsing from the open neck and pooling in the trough of her apron. There was no sign of his head.
A crack and a rustle from the foliage above alerted them and Edith screamed again, attempting to straighten her legs out in front of her and push her way back from under the trees. Porgy went down on one knee and clamped a hand across her mouth. Her eyes darted wildly to the canopy. Atkins put the rifle butt to his shoulder and scanned the foliage.
With his boot, Porgy clumsily struggled to push the headless body of the dead soldier off Edith’s legs. “Shhh,” he whispered in her ear before dragging her to safety.
Several other soldiers came running. Atkins beckoned them to stop and dropped down on one knee, eyes still fixed above him. He heard the sound of magazine cut-offs opened and loading bolts ratcheted back as one or two of the men circled round warily. He was aware of the sobbing nurse somewhere behind him, the noise growing fainter as Porgy took her back to the safety of the entrenchment.
His awareness immediately refocused as he caught movement on a bough above him. He gave rapid fire, five rounds as per. There was a sudden crack and crash as it fell through the canopy. The men backed off as something hit the ground. It was the soldier’s head. The rustle continued high up in the tree as something jumped from one branch to the next in an effort to escape. Atkins and two other men followed the sound, firing blindly up into the foliage. Several others moved round outside the copse to cut it off. Whatever it was, they had it trapped now.
There was a scream as something snatched a soldier up into the foliage. His rifle clattered to the ground. There was a wet crunch accompanied by a strangulated sound before a head dropped down, bounced on the ground, and ended up staring, horrified, at Atkins.
Men blazed away into the trees, lost in fear and anger.
“Stand back,” said a voice.
It was Porgy. From somewhere he had acquired a Lewis gun, slung from his right shoulder by a canvas strap and carried on his hip, a fresh circular magazine fixed to the top and several others in their canvas webbing slung over his other shoulder.
“Where?” he growled.
Atkins jerked his head upwards.
Somebody, an NCO, fired a Very flare into the trees. It burst with an angry hissing white light, setting the leaves ablaze and casting its stark glare over the area. There came a hoarse throaty screech and a rapid chattering as something thrashed about in the tree.
“There!” shouted someone as the dying glow of the Very light caught something shiny and brown. Porgy opened fire. The magazine rotated and the rapid rattle of the Lewis gun ripped through the foliage. There was an ear-splitting screech, like nails on a blackboard, and a large body crashed down followed by another.
Atkins stepped forward to examine the large, insect-like creature. Nearby, there was the decapitated body of the second soldier. “Yrredetti,” he said, recognising the creature and its mottled markings from their mission in the forest, before putting his rifle against the creature’s head and firing. Rather than dying, as he had every right to expect it would, the now headless insectoid body began thrashing about and only stopped when Porgy unloaded another entire magazine into it.
As the flames from the flare spread above them and the trees in the copse began to blaze, stretcher-bearers arrived to carry away the two dead soldiers. They left the body of the Yrredetti to burn.
INTERLUDE THREE
Letter from Private Thomas Atkins
to Flora Mullins
9th November 1916
Dearest Flora,
I should be writing this from Sans German, by rights. We should have been relieved and back in the reserve line by now, but all that’s gone to pot. We’re sans Germans all right, but we’re sans everything else too. Although things are looking up. We had a picnic this evening, al fresco, as they say, to celebrate our first harvest. Like all picnics we got pestered by insects, well only the one, but you should have seen the size of it.
Porgy is sweet on a nurse. He’s quite serious about her, I think. It’s sad and funny to see. But all the boys love our ‘Roses of No Man’s Land’ and she has a fearsome Sister over her who forbids fraternisation, so I don’t hold out much hope for him, though he seems proper determined and pines like a lost puppy.
Mercy is up to his scrounging ways again. He’s found something special for Lt Everson that he won’t tell us about. Loves a secret, does Mercy. Hasn’t stopped Gutsy starting a book on what it might be though. I put a tanner on a bath tub, because well, we haven’t washed for nearly two weeks now, so God knows we could use one. Well, I say a tanner, but we haven’t had any pay for the last few weeks and it don’t look as if the payroll will come any time soon, either.
Ever yours,
Thomas
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“If the Sergeant Steals Your Rum…”
AFTER THE YRREDETTI incident, fires were set on the plain in a controlled slash and burn policy, forming a cordon sanitaire around No Man’s Land to deny further cover to any predators. Atkins watched as the smudgy black smoke drifted into the sky. It felt as if they were finally making their mark, conquering the land that had seemed so hostile to them when they first arrived.
As the days passed, hope began to fade t
hat they would be transported home as quickly as they had arrived and the new survival practices became an established part of the daily military routine. With the most suitable trees nearby having been cut down for firewood, shoring or building materials, the Foraging Parties had to move further and further afield. Poilus continued to improve and Napoo, in high spirits, continued to educate the soldiers in huntergathering.
He had pointed out a fruit tree, the large purple fruits of which were the size of mangoes and wincingly sweet. This gave Mercy an idea. To be fair it was obviously an idea he’d had for quite a while because it didn’t take him long to put it into action. In an abandoned dugout, Mercy constructed a crude still from water drums and Ticklers’ jam tins, and even managed to scrounge some copper piping for a condenser. He also acquired some yeast from the cooks’ supplies.
One night Mercy slunk into the Section’s dugout carrying an old stone rum jar, almost tripping over Gordon as the creature chatted the seams of Pot Shot’s shirt. “Here,” he said. “Try this. I’ve already sold half to some lads from 4 Platoon.”
“You haven’t been nicking the rum rations, have you? Hobson’ll have your guts for garters,” said Porgy.
“Relax, this is my own mixture, isn’t it?”
“You mean—”
“He’s been brewing this stuff in secret for days,” said Gutsy, shaking his head. “I tried telling him it wasn’t a good idea. If he gets caught he’ll be for the high jump.”
“So what’s this gut-rot called then?”
“Flammenwerfer,” said Mercy with a grin. “Who’s first?”
Porgy and Half Pint pushed Atkins to the fore. “Go on, Only! Put hairs on your chest, will that.”
Mercy, laughing, poured a large tot into a dixie can and thrust it towards Atkins.
“Down! Down! Down! Down!” the others chanted.
Egged on by the rest, Atkins, wanting to be a good sport, grudgingly emptied his dixie in one draught. He immediately regretted it, stumbling back, half-blinded by stinging tears as the liquor burned down his throat. Flammen-bloody-werffer indeed. Although, as he fought for breath, he thought ‘Gas Attack’ would have been a more appropriate epithet. He could feel a pounding begin at the base of his skull until the beat of it filled his head. The burning liquid etched a path down his insides to his stomach where it seemed to reach flashpoint and ignite, expanding to fill his entire body. His limbs began to tingle and throb to the beat of his pulse. As he wiped the tears from his cheeks, he began to feel dizzy and light-headed. Blinking, he tried to speak, but it seemed that his vocal cords had melted.
The faces of the men before him began to contort, twisting and turning like a Futurist canvas, their features malleable, fading and shifting. The khakis and mud greys around him began radiating kaleidoscopes of geometric patterns that burst against his retinas. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head in an attempt to rid himself of the vision, opening them again only to find the scene around him stubbornly ablaze with guttering colours. He tried to speak again, but his voice sounded so far away and foreign he could barely hear himself let alone distinguish what he was saying or whether it made sense. He was finding it hard to breathe. He thrust a finger down the collar of his shirt and pulled at it. He looked down at his feet impossibly far below him and a wave of vertigo washed over him. Arms reached for him but he batted them away and struggled to put one foot in front of the other as he broke away from the garish India rubber limbs that tried to claw him back.
He clambered out of the blue-tinged trenches that expanded and contracted in waves before him, threatening to swallow him, and ran over sky blue mud with teal vapours rising in convection eddies. Above him, the sky boiled gently off into magenta hues. Time seemed to contract and expand in waves, too. One moment he was stumbling across crusting mud then next he found himself oozing slowly across the deep red stubble of the burnt open ground beyond as the orange fronds loomed towards him.
Two lidless eyes stared back; multicoloured whorls like oil on water dancing on their dark surface, watching him from the foaming purple undergrowth before shadows crept in from the periphery of his vision, occluding all…
NOISES INTRUDED ON the blackness. Atkins felt himself surface from dark depths as diffuse light seeped into his consciousness. The noise grew until he thought his eardrums would burst. He sat bolt upright, gasping for air like a drowning man breaking the water’s surface.
“Eyes!” he cried. “There’s something watching us!”
Gentle hands urged him back down. Everything seemed raw and tinged with garish colours, like a hand-tinted photograph. The after effects of the Flammenwerfer, he expected. Things still wavered slightly, washing gently to and fro. He went with it and sank back into the pillow.
“There, there, you’re safe. You’ve been hallucinating,” said a soft warm voice. It was Sister Fenton. She soaked a cloth in a bowl of water by his stretcher and gently wiped his face. “That was a stupid thing you did. It could have killed you. How many of you drank that filthy stuff? Three are over there. One is blinded, another two have lost their minds. One poor wretch stumbled into a flooded shell hole and drowned. You were lucky.” She held his head and gave him a sip of water. His dried, cracked lips stung as the water moistened them.
“Where…”
“You’re safe. You’re in the Casualty Clearing Station. Your friends brought you in. They found you wandering about—out there.”
“Mercy,” asked Atkins.
“Pardon?”
“My mate, Mercy.”
“Is he the one who brewed the liquor?”
“Yes,” he rasped.
“Hmm,” said Fenton with a note of disapproval. “Well he’ll get what’s coming to him. He’s in custody on a charge. There’s to be a Court Martial.”
CAPTAIN GRANTHAM, sECOND Lieutenant Everson and Lieutenant Jeffries sat behind the table. Everson hated this part of the job. Already that morning they had heard several cases. The penalties for even minor infractions were often excessive and out of proportion for the supposed crime. And as the accused this time was one of his own he felt a little ashamed too. Evans had always been one to run close to the wire. He looked along the table. Captain Grantham was playing nervously with his fountain pen, clearing his throat every minute or so. The only person who seemed relaxed with the situation was Jeffries. Since most of the men who tried the liquor were in 4 Platoon, Lieutenant Jeffries had a personal stake in the case. One of his men had died, another had been temporarily blinded and another had been relegated to the stockade with the shell-shocked. Everson heard Hobson’s bark outside. He shifted position, sitting upright.
“Prisoner and escort, halt! Right turn!”
Evans entered the dugout flanked by two soldiers.
“Prisoner and escort, halt! ’tenshun!”
Evans stood to attention, his thumbs extending down along his trouser seams, looking straight ahead at the wall over the officers’ heads, his face emotionless but for his eyes betraying a flicker of fear. “What’s this one?” asked Grantham.
Everson read from the charge sheet regretfully, “The accused, 98765 Private Wilfred Joseph Evans, 13th Pennine Fusiliers, a soldier of the regular forces, is charged with, when on active service, wilfully destroying Army property without orders from a superior officer and with brewing and distributing alcohol.”
“Which frankly doesn’t cover the half of it,” said Jeffries. “Several of my men are in hospital and one is dead because of this man’s actions. Brewing and distributing alcohol in the trenches. In fact, worse than alcohol. The report from the MO says here that the liquor, while being extremely alcoholic, also contained some form of noxious opiate, causing hallucinations. This man’s expertise with the still equipment suggests to me that this isn’t the first time he’s done this.”
“With respect, Lieutenant,” said Everson. “There is no evidence he knew the ingredients to be harmful.”
“Nevertheless,” pressed Jeffries in clipped and measured t
ones. “I would ask for the maximum sentence.”
“Has the accused anything to say in his defence?”
Even if he had, thought Everson, it wouldn’t do him any good.
“With respect—” began Evans.
“Respect?” barked Jeffries, shouting him down. “You know nothing of respect, Private!” He turned and whispered to Grantham.
The Captain had a glazed look in his eyes, almost as if he had given up. He nodded, and then spoke up. “The unauthorised use of Army property will not be tolerated. I will be issuing a general order expressly banning the fermenting of alcohol for consumption forthwith. Sergeant, make sure his equipment is put beyond use. As for you, Private, penal servitude not being practical at this point, I hereby sentence you to Field Punishment Number One. I trust you will learn from this. Dismissed.”
“Sah!” barked Hobson. “Prisoner and Escort left turn. Quick march.” Hobson marched Evans and his men away.
Grantham sighed, pushed his chair back and began shuffling his papers together in preparation to leave when Lieutenant Tulliver and Lieutenant Mathers entered.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Mathers. “Tulliver and I have a request. If I might?”
“Eh?”
Jeffries leaned forward and looked past Grantham at Everson, his eyes narrowing. Everson shrugged.
“It’s about the still your private constructed, sir. I understand you’ve given orders for it to be dismantled.”
“Yes, dashed bad show. Showed the fella what for, though, eh, Jeffries?”
“Sir,” said Jeffries darkly.
“Damned right.”
“Well as you know, my tank and Mr Tulliver’s plane only have limited supplies of petrol. Without it, our machines will be useless. Although unfit for human consumption we might be able to use this liquor as a petrol substitute.”
“Of course!” said Everson. “That’s a capital idea!”
