Edward, followed quickly by Liam, dashed over to help his friend. By the time that they got to Big Charlie he had rolled over on to his back, his face had turned a deathly white and blood poured out of his mouth. Liam lifted Big Charlie’s head onto his knee whilst Edward cut the shirt away to reveal the wound. There was a huge, gaping hole from which the intestines were gradually emerging. He knew that the situation was hopeless but he had to try; he couldn’t let the life of his mighty friend ebb away without trying. He told two men to go and find some stretcher bearers whilst he tore open his field dressings and stuffed them into the wound.
A large, red muddy pool was forming underneath Big Charlie and Edward struggled desperately to stem the flow. Big Charlie lifted his head and said weakly ‘That’s sorted them buggers out as well.’
‘Aye. You did a fantastic job, Charlie,’ Edward said, searching for words that wouldn’t betray his increasing despair. ‘Now what we want is to get you back on your feet so that you can sort a few more of them out.’
His ears thudded and sweat dripped off his face into Big Charlie’s wound as he fought feverishly to stop the draining blood. ‘There’s nowt you can do, Eddie,’ Big Charlie coughed as he slowly lifted is hand to grasp Edward’s. ‘Don’t worry about me. Get the lads off the hill.’
‘The lads are ok. Just keep going, mate. Keep going. I can’t let you go out here.’
The blood gurgled in Big Charlie’s throat as he struggled to speak. In a rapidly weakening voice he said ‘Tell our Dot … I’d have been … right suited about … giving her … those babies. Tell her … as how … she’s the most … important thing … that’s … ever …’
The big man’s voice trailed away and his eyes closed.
Liam stared rigidly with disbelieving eyes at his dead friend’s face, unable to accept the awful truth. He grasped Big Charlie’s jaw and shook his head despairingly. As Edward turned away to find his own space to hide the welling grief, Liam bent his face down and kissed Big Charlie’s forehead.
Edward sank to the ground and gripped his bursting head between his hands. Some part of his own life had been ripped from his body and he fought against an overpowering nausea. Big Charlie had been essential to their lives since they were small children. They had looked together, with the wonderment of young boys, at the grass growing under broken glass between the sets in their street. As older boys they had played football on the same cobbled streets and stony grounds. The three of them had started school together, played rugby for the same team, joined the Territorials at the same time and enlisted as regulars on the same day. Simple, honest lives. Not bloodied. And dead. At which second, as the blood had dripped into the dusty stones of this French hillside, had Big Charlie’s life force left him? Edward felt guilt in his unwitting involvement in the death of his friend and incapable of resolving in his mind the void created by his absence.
His shame became a haunting cry that echoed in his mind then plundered his memories. He shuddered as he thought of this big man, gently shy and modest in life, lying shamelessly ruptured and exposed in death. Big Charlie would become carrion, claimed callously by the French earth whose freedom he had sought. Would he scoop out this alien soil and take home the Salford blood?
The wailing cry became that of the ravaging birds that would fall from the high stone slabs. It rose in harsh sounding words and yearning notes and lifted his consciousness. He heard a voice that he knew to be Liam’s but which had taken on a haunting, nasal quality as he sang. The notes held in the air and floated around the valley, mournful, tragic and inextricably part of the bleak cliffs and the torn stumps of the trees. A bird that soared and probed as it searched amongst the black crevices for its dead mate.
Edward turned and watched Liam as he knelt at the side of the body of their lifelong friend, his head tilted back slightly and his wet eyes tightly closed.
Liam’s voice rose in earnest supplication then fell in pitiful remorse. The strange words held no meaning but the sounds probed hidden depths of emotions, assaulted senses that had been boxed securely away from the numbing devastation of warfare. They scraped starkly across the stretched nerves of the constantly bereaved. Liam’s voice was an instrument of anguish and despair that reached through the dark curtain of death. It rose in the air and shared its grief with the spirits that waited to guard the soul of the dead man on its long journey.
Edward felt disturbed and troubled yet stimulated, provoked and ravaged yet uplifted, as the song pillaged emotions from his locked up mind. He bent his head and prayed for the sacrificed life of Big Charlie.
They used their trenching spades to silently dig the grave then retched as they stuffed back the intestines and reluctantly threw soil on the still clothed but lifeless body of their friend. Two bleached and torn branches formed a rough cross on which they hung his identity tag before performing a simple ceremony. ‘Thanks for everything, mate’ Liam said quietly as he held his hand on the cross. ‘We’ll miss you more than you’ll ever know.’
Edward reached for the identity tag and pressed it to his lips. ‘Bye Charlie. We’ll have to see if we can win this one without you. God Bless.’
A small stone dislodged itself from the pile on the grave and formed a curving track down the side of the mound.
‘That song that you sang just before, it was a bit unusual,’ Edward ventured hesitantly.
‘It was an ullalulla that my old Irish Granny used to sing at a wake,’ Liam responded. ‘It goes better with a glass of whisky.’
Minutes later, they had rejoined the platoon and surveyed the devastation that Big Charlie had caused in the machine gun emplacement. The silenced guns and the scorched and dismembered bodies of the dead German soldiers lay scattered around the area.
‘How many more does there have to be?’ Liam whispered, addressing the question to an unseen listener. He turned to Edward and placed his arm across his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry to do this to you, mate, but I’ll be going with him,’ he said quietly but firmly before joining the others.
They collected a few trophies from the corpses before burying them and shouldered the three machine guns and ammunition. Moving off again in the direction of the first objective, the Black Line, they could see the young Captain some distance ahead, standing on a small rise as he urged the men forward and directed the field of operations. He died instantly as the bullets tore into his body and he collapsed in a heap at the side of the dishevelled corpse of yet another once proud Salford soldier.
The ferocious artillery bombardment from behind them was lifted forward and was now peppering the trench system that was their first objective. Another of his platoon fell with a bullet through the heart followed by a second with a gaping wound in his shoulder. Edward detailed a man to get him into a safe hollow and apply a field dressing.
Soldiers from the support companies passed through their platoon and then progressed up towards the north east. The Salford men moved forward, rifles in front of them, firing as they went.
The shelling was taking its toll on the enemy soldiers and the machine gun fire was lessening. They worked their way slowly towards the German lines, incurring five more casualties between the two platoons. Finally, three hours after they had commenced the attack, they were in the German trenches. There was some strong resistance initially but this soon collapsed in the face of the fierce bayonet assault by the British troops.
Grey faced, grey uniformed soldiers began to emerge from tunnels dug into the sides of the trenches with their hands held above their heads. Grateful for the chance to give themselves up. Their war was ended and they were still alive. There were so many of them that they presented a problem. Lieutenant Williams detailed a man who was already injured and needed medical attention to accompany them and they set off back towards the Allied jump off lines. On the way back, the German soldiers willingly collected their injured British counterparts and assisted them back to the Allied medical posts.
The Lieutenant showed them on the detailed ma
p prepared by the air ordnance where they were in the trenches and outlined the plan for the next stage. It was now four hours since they had mounted the attack and they munched on some dried biscuits and sipped their water. Edward’s group was to progress up the communications trench then cross over some open ground to meet up with the Lieutenant’s platoon which was going to clear up the adjacent trench.
Because the achieving of the Black Line had been more difficult and more slowly gained than the planned time, the curtain of artillery fire had now moved some distance ahead. The communications trench, however, was fairly clear and minutes later they were up on the open ground. There was a small barn about two hundred yards ahead but little else. The ground was flat and offered little by way of cover. They would have to check out the barn; perhaps they would find some abandoned stores.
The men approached carefully using whatever limited cover was available and found themselves on a rough track that led up to the ramshackle building. Trees along either side of the track offered some protection and Edward split the group to utilise the cover on both sides. As they neared it they could see broken pieces of old machinery, a smashed water butt and a couple of ancient and long disused farm implements.
The sun was streaming through the broken roof of the old barn, lighting up the interior with bright, dusty shafts. Numerous missing planks from the side of the building revealed small drifts of old straw inside and a rickety wooden ladder leading up to a dangerously broken down mezzanine. There appeared to be no evidence of recent occupation but Edward urged caution as he waved the men forward. The distant rumble of the artillery bombardment marked an odd contrast to the rigid stillness that embraced this flat plain as they crept under the cover of the hedge.
They were within twenty yards of the building when a devastating torrent of machine gun bullets ripped into them from behind an upturned farm cart standing in overgrown innocence in the field on the right. Three men fell instantly and the rest dived to find whatever cover was possible.
‘Bastards, stinking Boche bastards,’ Edward heard Liam shouting vehemently behind him. The cart was around forty yards away and the men were firing at it more out of frustration than conviction. The ground in front of the cart sloped gradually upwards towards it and offered no cover at all.
Liam began to crawl up a very shallow ditch that curved off up to the right and Edward yelled after him. ‘This one’s for Big Charlie,’ Liam shouted back.
After setting up the Lewis Gun team, Edward started to follow round the ditch after his pal. As he came within sight of him, Liam suddenly rose to his feet, pulled the pin on a grenade and flung it at the cart in one movement before dropping back down in the ditch. The cart rocked dramatically as the grenade exploded before falling slowly forward exposing the machine gun emplacement. Edward could see bodies of some of the German gunners on the ground but others were shouting and gesticulating wildly. Liam turned to Edward, who was yelling at his friend to come back. He grinned and stuck his thumb into the air. Then he was on his feet again and pulled the pin on another grenade.
The bullet hit Liam in the side of his forehead before he completed his throw and, as he fell, the grenade flew from his hand and landed some distance down the ditch. The explosion in the soft mud was muffled and Edward was on his feet and running towards Liam when he heard a great gasping sigh from where the grenade had landed. As he bent down to inspect his friend’s wound, he saw the faint green gas escaping from the deep mud where it had been trapped since some previous action. Blood was pouring down Liam’s deathly white face but he was still breathing. Edward knew that he must get him away from the gas before he could give any first aid.
He heaved on Liam’s shoulders, praying for the strength to get him to safety, hoping that his men would deal with the German soldiers, wishing that the gentle breeze, rolling the bank of green gas towards him, would change its direction. It was bad enough losing Big Charlie but not Liam as well. His feet slipped in the cloying mud as he dragged the limp body, bullets flew around him and he searched the depths of his being for the strength to get him back. ‘Come on, you awkward little sod,’ he groaned as Liam’s foot became entangled in roots growing through the side of the ditch.
Sucking in air to support his desperate struggle, he felt the familiar burning sensation in his throat. His eyes began to smart as he forced more steps from his aching legs. Within seconds, his eyes were flames and his throat rattled, his head began to reel and images from his past floated up in front of him like a picture show. Machine gun bullets splintered a branch of a tree close to his head, his lungs were on fire and his throat seemed to be filled with burning coals. With sweat pouring off him, he forced his legs to complete the vital steps to get Liam to safety. He could no longer see and his mind had become a swirling mist of dreams when he heard the soldiers’ voices. The words were telling him to release Liam but they slowly drifted into the voice of his wife whispering ‘Keep safe, Love.’
Chapter 18
11th November 1918 Salford
The front door burst open and young Laura’s best friend, Amy, was standing there gasping, her cheeks glowing and her fists clenched with suppressed excitement. Edward found it difficult to comprehend how much the girls had changed since he had left four years before. Amy was taller now and more thoughtful, if somewhat constrained by a lack of funds, about her grooming and general appearance. The bloom of the young lady on her cheek only barely restrained the childish impishness which forever played around her eyes and mouth. She had the distracting fascination of a butterfly that wasn’t totally convinced about leaving its rather dishevelled chrysalis.
‘Eh up, Mr Craigie. Are yer still sitting there grumpy then?’ she observed with her usual disarming candour. ‘Is it the bad throat that’s getting yer down?’
‘Aye, well it doesn’t help’ Edward said smiling weakly. ‘You’re looking like the cat that’s found the cream. What’s up, then?’
‘It’s all the excitement going on outside. The fellas standing on the railings at the corner of Cross Lane reckon that the war is finished. They say that the Germans are signing some letter this morning then they’re going ‘ome.’
‘Well, that sounds like good news, Amy. It’s not before time.’
‘Aye, it is. Perhaps me Dad ‘ll be back ‘ome soon. Me Mam says she ‘as a list of jobs to keep ‘im occupied when he gets back,’ Amy enthused.
Edward shuddered and turned away from Amy. He had seen Amy’s Dad, a soldier in Lieutenant William’s platoon, lying dead before they reached the Black Line. Amy’s Mother couldn’t read and had obviously decided that there was always hope without confirmation of the worst.
‘Is your Laura not in then?’ Amy enquired. ‘I was thinking as how we could ‘ave gone a walk up to the Town ‘all to see if the Mayor said owt about it.’
‘They’ve all gone up to their Uncle Jim’s with their Mam. Why don’t you have a walk up there? You’ll probably see them.’
‘Why don’t yer ‘ave a walk up the Lane with me, then? Yer look as though yer could do with a bit of fresh air. Yer getting to look like Marley’s ghost sitting in ‘ere day in day out.’
Edward winced slightly. Amy always had a direct approach and an often discomfiting honesty. He knew, in himself, that he was using his damaged lungs and throat as a not totally justified reason for hardly ever going out. Two weeks before, he had collected his navy blue demob trilby from the Drill Hall and come home. He knew that his breathing was permanently impaired and that he would have to adapt to it.
The family had been delirious to see him and he had been thrilled to be at home. But he wasn’t home as a husband and father. He was only at home. It wasn’t just the fact that he couldn’t even begin to talk to his wife and family about his experiences during the last four years; it was as though his mind had set into some exclusive, distorted and incommunicative consciousness. He was going through the motions of playing the role of a Salford parent and spouse but it was on a different plane to the te
rrible and controlling reality of his mental state.
Their lack of dependence on him for almost any aspect of family life had developed in order to cope with his four year absence. Now, life for the rest of them just went on, with Edward occasionally caught in the orbit. His wife watched and waited with patience yet his existence, for so long ordered and organised and exposed to the most horrific manifestations of warfare, now seemed drifting and aimless. What he had had before the war couldn’t be reclaimed and what he had been before had been destroyed.
‘Do yer want me to spit on yer ‘air so yer can comb it, cos ‘appen yer’ve not got too much spit with that bad throat of yours?’ Amy’s offer shook Edward out of his reverie.
‘No thanks, Amy. I’m ok. But I think that I’ll stay here for now. I don’t really feel up to going out’ Edward said feebly.
‘Well, yer nowt like someone who’s ok to me. I don’t know about Marley’s ghost. Yer look as if yer sat here with a ghost on each shoulder. ‘Appen a bit of a walk might do summat to bring a bit of colour to yer cheeks.’ Amy’s directness, decorously delivered with her strong Lancashire accent, was hard to resist but Edward was not to be persuaded. It was so much easier to leave things than to make decisions.
When he had woken up in the hospital in Arras with a white ribbon tied round his neck to indicate that he was only to be fed on milk, he had felt hopelessly lost. There was a deep void in the pit of his stomach and a sense of floating helplessly in the middle of a great ocean. There were other, equally redundant, patients and there were professional, caring nurses who fussed about the injured men and tended to their needs. But the sense of purpose that had dominated his life for four years, that had moulded his mind and cemented a mutuality with his pals, had been prematurely terminated.
Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) Page 32
