by Thomas Wood
I manoeuvred the revolver so it was pointing straight at his groin, the one place in the world that no soldier ever wants to get hit.
He got the message.
“The gas attack…oh…yes. It is happening. Soon.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Be more specific.”
“I don’t know.”
The barrel found itself pressing into his skin, so forcibly that it would be reasonable if the skin started to break and blood began dripping from it.
“I do not know! I do not know!”
He spat and coughed as he tried his hardest to vehemently deny the allegations of the revolver, whilst simultaneously trying his best to keep his voice to a minimum.
“How did you…how did you know?” he whimpered pathetically, as I released some of the pressure on the side of his head in sympathy.
I toyed with the idea of leaving him in the lurch but thought better of it. We would all be better off if we were able to keep him onside and get as much information from him as possible.
But first, I would play with him, just a little bit. To remind him who was in control, nothing else, no strange sense of satisfaction could be drawn from this.
Still, the Captain remained silent.
“We know that in all likelihood the gas is in canisters. Those canisters will be deployed to your frontline very soon. What we want to know is when are they likely to release the stuff and, more importantly, what it is that is actually in those canisters.”
He looked up at me again, his eyes seeming to mumble the prayer just as much as his mouth did. Eventually, as he started to dribble from his mouth, but also his eyes, he began to speak in a language that I could understand.
“Please…tell me…how did you know? How did you find out?”
I let his question linger for a few moments, as I felt several pairs of eyes suddenly lock themselves on me, as if I was the only one who knew the answer.
“Please…” he repeated.
I looked to the Captain. That was one step too far, one that I was not willing to take without his blessing. Surprisingly, he weakly nodded in my direction. I hoped that was a sign that he would be resuming command as soon as possible. It was not something that I was ever especially comfortable with.
“Our intelligence services found out.”
“But, how?”
“They had a source. She managed to get a message out to her contacts before your lot began to track her down.”
He looked at me and began trying to get to his feet. Instinctively, I took a step backwards. I pulled the pistol away from him and let it dangle down at my side. He may have been an enemy soldier, but he was of no real threat to me right now.
He removed his spectacles, and, for the first time, I realised that he had the most wonderful blue eyes that I had ever seen before. They were as vibrant as the hottest summer day, the only clouds that were apparent were the ones that were soon rolling down his cheeks as he continued to beg for more information.
“Please…please…do you know if she is okay?”
I tried to not let my face give away the true answer, but instead tried to manipulate his thoughts to work in my favour. If he thought that there was a possibility that she was still alive, then maybe he would give something to us in return. Maybe this nurse meant something to him, reminded him of his sister maybe.
“The gas attack. What is it and when?”
He swallowed what must have been a football-sized blob of saliva, as it looked as though it had taken every ounce of energy to be able to force it down his throat, but eventually, he spoke.
“The Kaiser Wilhelm Society.”
I looked around at the others for anything that resembled any recognition from our briefing earlier on. But there was nothing.
“What?”
“The Kaiser Wilhelm Society.”
“What is that?”
“It was inscribed on the crates. All of the crates that carried the canisters.”
“Go on.”
“We weren’t told directly about what was going to happen, but it did not take a genius to work out what it was they are planning. A gas attack, a big one I think they are hoping for. Somewhere in this sector. I do not think they have decided where yet.”
“What makes you say that?”
“They issued us with these masks. Just a ball of cotton really, that is to be dipped in a solution as soon as the attack starts. To protect us. I have friends, many of them up and down the line who have also been issued the same. Some of them are fifty or sixty kilometres north of here. There is no way that they have enough canisters to have them all the way up the line.”
“The canisters, what was written on them. Is there anything more you remember about them?”
“Ja, one other thing. Just one word under The Kaiser Wilhelm Society.”
“What was it?” I was growing incredibly impatient, as it increasingly felt as though he was biding his time, just waiting for the moment that his comrades swept in and took him off into the night sky.
“Chlor.”
“What?”
“Chlor. I think you call it chlorine?”
“Chlorine? But that can kill a man, can’t it?”
“I would guess that is the proposed outcome, Earnshaw,” I retorted, turning my attention back to the German.
“The girl, the one who passed the information onto you, is she okay? Did she make it out alive?”
I stared him down for a moment, trying to work out exactly why he had taken just as much of an interest in the invisible woman as I had. Maybe he really did picture her as his sister.
He continued to have no luck with me and so turned to the Captain to petition him instead.
“Sir? Please tell me if she is okay?”
The Captain shrugged, mercilessly.
“What makes you think we know? We only get told the bare minimum.”
The German sank back to his knees, this time unashamedly grovelling at the feet of Captain Arnold.
“Take me with you! Please! She’ll be trying to get to England. Take me with you, send me there, at least that way I might find her again!”
“How would you know that?”
“The girl, your source, that was my Emilie. She is my girlfriend, my sweetheart. She was a nurse at the hospital. We always said that if something like this was to happen, she would try to get to England. She wrote me a letter. She was alive three days ago.”
I felt sorry for him all of a sudden, the rage that I had felt for him just a few moments ago at his stubbornness completely wiped from my conscious mind.
“Please…” he begged as he began to weep again, “Please take me with you…”
I looked across at Captain Arnold.
What is the situation dictating here?
11
The artillery that suddenly screamed all around us was utterly terrifying. I hated every second of them, even if they were from our own guns, as I didn’t trust them. I hated the lack of control that I had over them as soon as they began to rain down.
In a firefight there was always something that I could be doing; firing my weapon, reloading or issuing an order to someone, but in an artillery barrage, I could do nothing but sit and wait for the lucky shell that would fall on my position.
I would probably be able to see it coming, that was the worst bit. A small black dot, I supposed, that began to give up and plummet to the earth, gradually growing larger as it filled my vision. There would be no hope in trying to outrun or outmanoeuvre it. I would be dead before I could think about what I was trying to do.
All I can do is tuck myself in and hope.
The air felt as though it was full to bursting with metal, both complete shells and the more tormenting fragments of shells already burst. The ground that I tried to bury myself into trembled as if it was having some sort of a seizure.
We had scurried across No Man’s Land like rats, but as the shells fell all around us, I wished that we had been able t
o dig ourselves into the ground like rats also.
The deep and throaty roar of the explosions never seemed to cease for what felt like an eternity. I looked at my wristwatch, that was two minutes of shells so far. They would surely have to stop soon.
I wondered how many guns were firing at us and whether the shells that fell just behind the farmhouse were intentional, or if their aim was off. I thought for a moment that it was at first to scare us, before the rounds began to chase us back to our lines, but I was not so sure.
A huge cloud of dirt began to drift over the top of the farmhouse, depositing a strange dust over every one of the inhabitants. The cloud continued to roll as the shells did not let the earth settle for a single second, as it continued to shake the dust around in my own head for a while after the barrage had stopped.
The ringing in my ears banged away for many more minutes after the cessation of the rounds, where the only sense that was really worth anything was my eyesight, and even that was hindered by the dark cloud that engulfed us.
Still, Lawrence, Chester and Hamilton continued to keep watch over No Man’s Land, however ineffective it might have been.
As the ringing in my head slowly began to subside and in the ensuing silence that followed, I allowed myself a brief respite, to think of something far better than sitting in the ruined farmhouse.
I did something that I had rarely done before, unless I had known I was in a relative safety.
I thought of home.
For some peculiar reason, I saw thinking of home while out on a raid one of the greatest signs of weakness that I could think of. It made a man more sensitive, compassionate even as he thought about the happy days gone by of walking through fields and streets that were calm and cheerful.
Except this time, I did not think of my family, but of the life that I had enjoyed before I was tainted by the experiences of war. It felt strange to me to think of it, so distant in my memory that it felt more like a utopia than anything that resembled a reality.
There was a time, I thought, where an artillery shell did not fall around you. There was a time when you did not have to carry a rifle around with you for your every waking moment, or watch as a friend slowly died. There was a time, not so long ago, where I had not taken another man’s life.
My gaze drifted over to the German, who had pressed himself up against the sturdiest wall that he could find, as if a direct hit would somehow be repelled by it.
I began to feel sorry for him, for the way in which that he too had been taken from his previous life, trained to kill and then ripped from the only thing that he still had some control of; his own letter writing. I wondered if it was the nurse that he had been scribbling to as we dragged him out, or if he had already known that she was on her way to England. Maybe she had already managed to get a note to him.
I thought about them for a while, about how they had met and developed together, all the while the pulls of the girl seemingly growing stronger to me.
There was something that we shared. But I could not work it out.
I checked myself over for any holes or drips that would indicate that I was wounded in any way, but, thankfully, there was none.
As I patted myself down, I gave my own brain a mental slapping.
Don’t make him human. He is still the enemy.
“Right then, we’ve got what we came for. Let’s make our way back?” Lawrence was itching to get going, I had never seen him so nervous. For a moment, it looked as though the scar that lined the side of his face was bulging in anticipation of what might happen next.
Captain Arnold had needed a good shake up, which is what he had received courtesy of the artillery shells.
“No. That’s not what is going to happen. I want to head back, locate some of the canisters and destroy them. Maybe bring one back for our chaps to take a look at.”
Lawrence pulled his rifle from the top of the wall and slid his back down it, furious with the Captain.
“You have got to be joking. You can’t seriously be suggesting that we go back and risk all of our lives for that stuff?”
“You didn’t go there in the first place, Lawrence. You were sitting in here, remember?” Earnshaw couldn’t help himself but get a swipe in. He was ignored by everyone.
“If we do make it into those trenches alive and that is a big if of itself, then how many do you think we can destroy?” He looked to the German, “How far apart are they?”
The German gave it some consideration, “Right now? Probably one every three or four fire bays. Depends how long you want to be in there. But you made decent work of my friends.”
“So, we could maybe get three or four canisters. Is that worth it for all of our lives? They have hundreds, if not thousands more canisters, up and down the line. If we were to take three out here, it’s hardly going to save the world, is it?”
“I am the one that is in command here, Sergeant Lawrence. If that is what I order you to do, I expect you to do it.”
Lawrence fell into a silence that was filled only by the tension that was stretching through the farmhouse quicker than anything I had ever experienced before. All it would take would be one match strike for the whole thing to erupt in a ball of flames.
“Sir,” I whispered, turning my head away from Lawrence so that he would not hear what it was I was saying, “with all due respect, I do think it would be futile to head back. The Germans would almost certainly have found out about our presence now. They would be on a much higher alert. We would be almost guaranteeing the loss of one of us if we were to go back.”
He thought about it for a few moments before Hamilton chucked in his tuppence worth.
“I think we should go. If we can bring back one for our boys to analyse, think of the good that it would do. Besides, if we do release some of their gas, the Germans would be the victims to their own weapon. It might even make—”
“Shh, quiet.”
It was Chester, who had twitched just enough to get his words out. I noticed too that Hamilton’s body had stiffened somewhat to react to whatever it was that had made Chester speak up.
“What is it?” queried Captain Arnold, as Lawrence sprang back up into his rightful place.
Hamilton took his place by sliding down the wall and crawling over to us.
“We’re going to have to put that discussion on hold, Captain. We are going to have much bigger problems. There was some sort of movement up ahead. Just ahead and over to our left. It has stopped for the time being. I’m not sure what it was.”
It could have reasonably only been one thing; a patrol of enemy soldiers. Whatever their intentions were, there was a good chance that things could get quite heated, which had made Sergeant Lawrence’s scar begin to sweat far more than he did from his hairline. He was nervous. We all were.
The Captain pulled the German into his face by the scruff of his shirt, “What could it be?”
“How should I know? I am not in the lines anymore. I have no knowledge of what is going on in there, just like you.”
“Could it be an offensive?”
Maas simply shrugged. He had become indignant towards us, as if he knew that his best option was to be found by his comrades, rather than just left in the dirt with a hole in the side of his head.
The Captain practically dropped Maas back on his backside, as he scurried over towards Lawrence, on his hands and knees.
“Keep an eye on him, Earnshaw.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what he expected him to do. I thought it quite unlikely that he was about to make a break for it, he was in just as much of a precarious position as we were.
I accompanied the Captain up towards an opening in the ruins, which must have been a doorway at some stage of its life, as the others took up a position behind the meagre wall that would barely offer up protection against a raindrop, never mind a bullet.
I narrowed my eyes, as I tried to filter out the final clouds of dust that was still failing to settle after the artillery had sound
ed. I could see nothing out of the ordinary, not for No Man’s Land anyway.
The ground all around was uneven and threatening, with remnants of trench life littered everywhere; old, rusting barbed wire, trench duckboards and I was sure that I could even see a gas light sitting on top of one of the smashed trees.
Of course, the obligatory corpses were there, too plentiful to count. But I could not make out any of them moving.
“Where are we looking?”
“That way, at your eleven o’clock. There was just one wide mass. Like a wall coming towards us. Then it disappeared. I think it dropped into a shell hole.”
“And you’re sure you saw something?”
“We both saw it, Sir,” protested Chester. “There was definitely something moving.”
The German cleared his throat. We all jumped.
“Quiet.”
“You do not want to know what I have to say?”
“Say it.”
“Only if you give me your word that you will take me back with you, there is no point in me going back to my own lines now. I will most likely be executed if they found out what I had told you.”
“You’re going to tell us anyway, mate. Otherwise none of us will be going back to our lines.”
“I want your word.”
The Captain lost it, scurrying over to the German and whipping his revolver out simultaneously. The noise that he generated in doing so was enough to attract the attention of even the deafest of enemy soldiers.
“You are going to tell us anyway. Or I’ll put one of these in the side of your head.”
The German pursed his lips for a second, debating whether it would be better to call the Captain’s bluff or not. In the end, he realised that he had no more bargaining power, we had already got what we had wanted from him. He was worth little to us now.
“They will be coming to clear up after the artillery,” his weak and crackled voice spoke as he tried to control the tremble in the back of his throat. “They will be very mad that you had been in our lines. The artillery was to try and stop your retreat so that they could catch up with you. Finish you off themselves.”
“Who’s they?”
