by Thomas Wood
I leapt from my hiding place, my baton, complete with spiky nails, hanging low behind my hip somewhere. As the first German began to turn around, I swung the truncheon up and into his face, with the same force and vigour like a batsman trying to make the boundary.
I left the truncheon hanging in the side of his face, as he let out the first bellow of the scrap, alerting everyone on the Western Front to something happening out in the farmhouse.
I made my way over to the second man, who had foolishly dropped his weapon, throwing myself onto him and pushing him over Maas. Franck woke up with a start, as the wind was forcibly pushed from his lungs at the weight of two fully grown men suddenly landing on him.
I pulled the German off him for a moment, as I felt the Captain begin to dispatch of his second victim behind me.
Rolling the German round, I whipped the side of his face with the revolver, sending blood and teeth flying in every direction.
It was as his jaw cracked under the third and fourth blow that I decided to change tack. The Captain had ordered us to keep it nice and quiet, but Lawrence and Chester had blasted that one out of the water with three rounds from their rifles.
There was no point in prolonging the inevitable for this poor chap.
Turning my head over to the left-hand side, I pushed the revolver into his forehead and squeezed.
Boom.
The round seemed to echo around the quaking walls for a moment or two, as I slowly turned my head back to face the mess that I had created. Surprisingly, there was very little blood on me or him, but I knew that the carnage would be evident if I was to look at the back of his skull. Which I didn’t have time to do, as there was suddenly another body on me.
The weight of whoever it was pushed me down into my victim, as if he was forcing me to look at what it was I had done. The boy’s eyes were wide open and forlorn, his mouth hanging open in an eternal howl. I could still feel the warmth of his mouth and the slight odour of his breath, even in death.
The figure suddenly brought something heavy and blunt down on the back of my neck and I felt the blood rush to the site immediately, the bruising apparent straight away. My wind pipe felt like it had ruptured, and I found it incredibly difficult to breathe for minutes afterwards.
But I knew I had to fight on, if I was to give up now then I would be going the same way as all the other Germans that I had killed that night, and I didn’t really want to be in the waiting line with them at the gates of hell.
I tussled and fought with the grip of the German, until I angled myself in such a way that I could get a half-swing on his neck. I connected just under his jaw, my knuckle smashing into his jawline before trying to punch through the skin of his neck.
I repeated the motions three or four times, trying to get the man off me, whose breath stank even more aggressively than his dead comrade.
Nothing seemed to move him however, each punch that I dealt brushed off as if I was merely a bee sting.
The German began to snarl, a deep, meaningful snarl, that told me everything that I needed to know. He was going to kill me.
Suddenly, revolver rounds began to snap and crack away inside the farmhouse, from which side and towards whom I had no idea, my only knowledge was that they were pinging around inside.
Being hit by one of them was the least of my troubles right now.
My revolver was trapped under my left side of my body, while my right side was completely weapon-less. I was in trouble, I had nothing to fight with.
I was in even more trouble when I saw that the nearest of my weapons that were to hand, was firmly in the grip of the German who sat on top of me.
I could see small droplets of blood begin to dribble off the end of the sharpened nails, as I rebuked myself for the idiocy of leaving it lying in one of the dead Germans.
He must have pulled it out himself, which meant that he would have known how far embedded the nails were into his comrade. He would have known how hard I had hit him. He would have known that I had meant what I had done.
He looked at the club for a second, as I tried one more, futile thrust towards his neck, which he avoided simply by leaning backwards.
What a horrible way to die.
I had fancied myself going out in an artillery barrage or in a hail of bullets, but not at the mercy of my own weapon. Especially one as barbaric and tortuous as the trench club. At least, I told myself, that the victims of that weapon had never known what was coming, I had never held it high above its victim’s head like this German was doing.
He was tormenting me with it.
There was nothing more that I could do, so I did the only thing that I never thought I would do in my life.
I heaved myself up as best as I could, in an attempt to meet the club and take the fight to him. Then, as I reached the highest point that he would allow me to go, I spat. Straight into his eyes.
He flinched, realising what I had done, before letting out the most ferocious roar, and bringing the club high above his head.
This was it. I was about to meet the same fate as so many others,
I probably deserved it. After all, I had just spat in another man’s face.
As the club began to descend, I thought of McKay, my sister, my parents, George Needs, the hip flask. Anything and everything it seemed, that meant that the falling club would take longer to get to my head.
Just as it came within an inch of connecting with my skin, a dark mass suddenly pulled the German from my body, one of the nails angrily ripping into the skin just under my eye and tearing it painfully. For a moment, I thought I would be blinded, but soon realised that my eyesight was perfectly intact.
The club hadn’t come down on my head. It had only left a deep gash in my cheek.
I scrabbled to my feet, as a struggle took place between a tangled shadow, as one seemed to chase the other around the room.
That was when the gunshots began to sound. Muffled to begin with, before getting far louder.
Bumf. Bumf. Bumf. Bang. Bang.
The body on top of the struggle jolted each and every time the revolver erupted, being shocked into jumping an inch or two into the air each time.
After the final gunshot, everything fell silent. Everything was perfectly still once more.
“Check the bodies, make sure they’re all dead.”
Figures began to appear all around me, tugging at the other shadows on the ground and pulling them around to make sure they were no longer breathing. I could not see how any of them were, they were all either filled with more holes than a rabbit warren, or more knife wounds than a bayonet practice doll.
I could do nothing but lie there, struggling to get my breath back.
Eventually, my chest in all kinds of pain and my lungs threatening to shut down, I wheezed my way over to where the two bodies had tussled together.
Huge craters had appeared in the dead man’s back, as the close proximity of the rounds had entered his body, obliterating anything in their path. They had done their job.
I rolled the body away to look at my saviour, who was wheezing and spluttering more than I was. His face was a fluorescent red colour, despite the greasy black that was slowly washing itself from the surface of his face.
“Hamilton…” I breathed, before being caught by a shortness of breath once again. “Thank you,” I coughed and spluttered, before turning away from him to get whatever it was at the back of my throat out onto the ground.
“Don’t mention it, Sergeant. You would have done the same.”
I looked around me. There were bodies all around us, some of them moving, some of them not, but at least three of them were already smoking.
I had survived, somehow. Again.
15
I slumped backwards, against one of the rickety old walls, as I finally allowed myself a few minutes of breathing, so that the nausea and vertigo could eventually pass over me. My shoulders heaved up and down, as if they were some sort of engine, pushing the air more than anyth
ing into my lungs, to stop myself from keeling over in a ball to die.
I stared up at the stars once again and just drank them in. I didn’t think of anything for a moment, except that, even in their smallness, they were exceptionally beautiful.
I thought of McKay once again, and how I had wanted him next to me for as much of my fighting days as possible. I wondered if he was still awake and whether or not he had managed to give us any thought as we had journeyed out on another adventure without him. I was certain that he had done, which made me notice his absence all the more.
But, at the same time, I was eternally grateful that he wasn’t with us and that he had avoided this particular little scrap. I felt like the tension that had festered between some of us in the last day or so, especially between Lawrence and Earnshaw, had been as a result of McKay’s situation.
Lawrence felt like he was getting the punishment that he deserved, while Earnshaw was prepared to fight for him to the death. It was good that McKay was not forced to see that kind of tension.
I felt frustrated with Lawrence for a moment, the animosity and anger that he harboured in his heart over McKay’s predicament completely unjustified, as he and Chester were quite clearly holding something back from being brought to light. He had been jumpy, panicky, so had Chester, which could have led to the whole thing ending up in quite a different outcome.
I had to bring it up. I heaved myself towards Chester and Lawrence and growled in their ears.
“What is wrong with you two? The Captain said to keep it quiet, he could not have been clearer.”
“Sorry. We were a tad jumpy.”
“You’re telling me. I don’t know what has happened with you two in the past, but either you leave it here, or you explain to me exactly what it is that is your problem. You will not risk our lives again like that, understood?”
My face was burning hot, a result of the fight but also the pure hatred that surged through my veins as I looked at the two Canadians. They were not bad men, in fact they were excellent soldiers, but they were damaged men. We all were. But there was a fine line between being damaged and being a liability.
Right now, they were both. They needed to pull themselves together.
There was an uneasy silence that suddenly started to stretch across the ruined farmhouse, as each of us slowly got back to normal and realised that the small scrap that we had been in might not have been the end of it, there could still be more on their way out to meet us. Especially as we had just fired off a series of gunshots.
I grabbed a rifle and leapt over to where the Canadians were sat, themselves already trying to strain their eyes as best as they could.
“See anything?”
“Nothing yet,” Lawrence was sheepish, humble even.
“Do you reckon we’ll see them again tonight?” Chester asked nervously.
“I hope not. I know one thing for certain, there’s no way we’ll be nabbing ourselves one of those canisters. That dream has turned to dust.”
“The Captain’s changed his mind?”
“Don’t know. But I for one won’t be going with him. I’m not on a death wish.”
They both chuckled, some of the tension between us diluted as I shuffled away from them.
“Keep your eyes peeled chaps.”
I coughed a few more football sized blobs of phlegm, as I tried to recover fully from the beating that my body had taken. As I coughed, blood began to drip to the floor, at which point I realised that the wound under my eye had torn far deeper than I had previously thought.
“That looks nasty,” breathed Captain Arnold. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, Sir. I’m fine thanks. Are you alright?”
“Perfectly fine, Andrew. We’ll give it a few minutes to die down, then think about heading back. Alright?”
“Yes, Sir.”
I was surprised to see that Franck was still sat there, as if I was him, I would have made off in any direction that I could find the minute that my captors had been engaged. He could have been back in his frontline trench by sunrise if he had wanted to.
“Nice bit of acting with that leg of yours.”
“I didn’t need to do much. It stings like a fire.”
“I know the feeling.”
I did not like him all that much, but I respected him. He had seemed like the kind of bloke that would do anything for whoever promised him the most, which had turned out to be true. But I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to live with myself, if I carried the knowledge that I had helped an enemy team wipe out some of my compatriots.
It seemed like he would do anything for this girl of his.
“I hope you find your girlfriend. And I hope she’s worth it.”
He seemed to get the message and instantly looked down at the ground, gradually letting the gravity of the situation sink into his conscience. As he processed what had just happened, the prayer-like plea began to be muttered under his breath again, this time without letting anyone hear its contents.
I wondered if it was some sort of confession, or if it was done out of guilt.
Although I had detested what he had done, I did not blame him, as I probably would have done the same thing had I known that I would survive a little longer in the hands of the enemy. My own officers seemed to want me dead far more than they did.
He had clearly had enough of this war, evident in the way in which that he knew exactly what to do the second the guns starting bucking. He had pressed himself up against the nearest wall that he could find, regardless of whether or not it would stop a bullet. There was nothing more to surviving than that. It merely came down to how lucky you were.
It was never down to that hip flask.
“Is everyone okay?” I rasped, as I looked around the band of merry men that had seemingly made it through unscathed.
“We’re both okay, Sergeant. Ready to move when you are,” whispered Chester, speaking for himself and Lawrence.
“I’m okay,” muttered Earnshaw, “bit of a headache though.”
“Better rush you to the hospital as soon as you’re back then mate,” chuckled Lawrence.
Everyone seemed to be absolutely fine, apart form the odd cut and bruise and the wheezing lungs. Considering the odds, we had done remarkably well.
I reached for a packet of my cigarettes, to join with the others who were already puffing away. The Germans already knew that we were here, so to see a small chimney of cigarette smoke was unlikely to have been too big a revelation for them.
Begrudgingly, I chucked the packet towards Maas, who had started to eye me up. I tossed him a packet of matches also. Within seconds, he was puffing away on the finest cigarette that the British empire had to offer.
“Thank you, my friend. Thank you.”
I bit my tongue for a moment, as I wanted desperately to tell him that we were not friends, we were far from it, but decided against it at the last moment. It would benefit nobody here if I was to make a comment like that one. We all needed to be as calm as possible for the next phase of the operation.
All of a sudden, a wave of guilt washed over me, causing me to spit my cigarette out immediately. I had forgotten someone. I hadn’t checked with the one person who I should have asked if they were okay, and he had been incredibly quiet ever since.
“Hamilton,” I half-rasped, half-whispered, “Hamilton?”
I found his body exactly where I had left him in the moments after the fight, where I had assumed that he was merely getting his breath back. But he was doing more than that. He wasn’t just trying to get his breath back, he was fighting to keep it there.
“Are you alright, Hamilton? What’s going on?”
He breathed heavily and slowly, as if he could not afford to speak right now, so instead I decided I would take control of him.
Running my eyes over his body, I could not see any visible signs of a wound or injury to his body. But that wasn’t to say there wasn’t one there.
“Come on, Hamilton. Tell m
e what’s wrong. Just one word will do.”
He heaved his chest in and spoke through a painful wheeze, as if it might have been his last breath altogether.
“Left…arm…”
“Left arm, left arm. Got it.”
“I…can’t move it…I…”
“Keep quiet. Stay quiet, mate.”
Slowly, I lifted his arm for him, so it extended outwards fully. It was there that I left it, as his blood began to drip freely over the rocks that had become his bed.
“He’s hurt?” Earnshaw asked as he shuffled his way over to the commotion.
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure.”
I ran my hand up the inside of his arm, his whole sleeve a darkened pigment, damper than the rest of his kit. I reached along the length of his arm, but could not find where it was he was hit.
As I turned to face Earnshaw, my hand accidentally brushed under his armpit, causing him to shriek violently, his whole body convulsing.
“It’s okay, Hamilton. Okay…It’s his armpit,” I announced, tentatively beginning to undo the buttons of his tunic.
“Pull the dressing out of that, would you?” I asked Earnshaw, passing him the tunic. We were going to need to patch him up and then move, as soon as possible.
The hole that had been sliced into his armpit was perfect, a deadly straight line that had looked completely intentional. I could not see how deep it was, but the thick, dark coloured, sticky blood that leaked from the slit told me that it was deep enough to be serious.
“Hamilton, you’re going to need to be as quiet as possible. Bite down on this,” I said, passing him the cloth bandolier that had housed my spare rounds of ammunition. It was the only thing that I could find.
“Here you are,” announced Earnshaw, passing the dressing to me.
“Okay, Hamilton. Here we go.”
I pressed the dressing into his armpit, forcing it up into the crevice of his pit, to the point where I felt part of it begin to pack into the hole that had opened up. Hamilton let up a distressed groan, which quickly passed as he began to succumb to the unconscious state that his body was begging for.
