The Gunner

by Paul Almond

  Yes, there did seem to be a white eminence. Was it not standing tall? And was that a cross I saw? In the right hand of what looked like a man, or rather, as he said, an angel? Some sort of being...

  A couple of other Gunners had stopped and stood, holding mugs of tea, also peering hard. Had they seen it, too? Edward came over and held out his diary. I looked down. “St. George” was written plainly. I looked back. Yes, that’s what I saw. And the more we all looked, the clearer it seemed: the patron saint of England. Riding on a charger? No, too fanciful. A heavenly figure astride the hill, cross in one hand, and what was that? A sword in the other? We all stood staring for several long minutes. Then, slowly, the wind wafted it away.

  I looked down. In this dense, thudding silence, I knew that we had all been given some sort of gift. Perhaps a vision of victory? For the time being, no one would ever know. I had seen something, I was sure. Victory in this war, oh yes. But would I live to see that?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Passchendaele

  Nr Vlamertinghe [Flanders] Oct 21st 1917: The batteries took over RFA [British] guns at the Battery positions. The mud around the Battery positions is indescribable. At the 35th, 38th, and 40th there are some German pillboxes which offer good protection. The 35th Battery now occupies the most advanced position on this front.

  22nd: The difficulties in moving the guns cannot be exaggerated, mud “hub high” and the hopeless congestion of traffic making the movement of guns almost a superhuman task. The sight of derelict guns hopelessly stuck in the Flanders mud is almost too common to excite interest.

  War Diaries: 10th Brigade CFA

  We had thought that the Somme was bad but this was ten times worse. In the middle of the night, I was struggling with our Battery up towards the Front, towards Passchendaele, which meant we were back up near Ypres. Out of the frying pan, as Old Momma used to say, into the fire.

  Sure, the 35th Battery had fought in two resounding victories: Vimy Ridge and Hill 70. But, I thought, here we’ve really met our match.

  And we were stuck in the same bowl of soup: men and horses struggling to haul limbers along this plank road. Someone had figured that a horse was worth seven men, so in our efforts to preserve the beasts we were all walking, NCOs and officers. No point in even trying to hitch a ride on one of the limbers, they were continually slipping off the planks, one wheel stuck in the mud, Gunners scrambling to push them back, hauling on spokes, pulling drag ropes, and Drivers heaving at traces — all swearing vigorously.

  To make matters worse, the whole route was chaos, just total chaos. Lorries, limbers, and carts lay tipped over on their gaunt, smashed sides and of course, coming back by the score, guys with head wounds or limping on one leg, stretcher carts on big wheels, walking soldiers so covered in mud you couldn’t tell if they were shell-shock cases or just staggering because of exhaustion.

  I nearly tripped over something and stopped — a fella lying on the edge of a shell hole. When my foot struck an arm, it moved. I bent over. “How ya doing, fella? Need help?”

  “Leave me. I just can’t go on. I wanna die.”

  I couldn’t do that. “Come on, I’ll give you hand up.”

  “No no, I’m too tired, I can’t even stand. Leave me here, leave me to die, I don’t care.”

  I understood, but I couldn’t just pass by. I stopped and hauled at him but try as I might, he would not get to his feet. I stood there in the darkness. Men jostled past. Then I saw the shape of a limber coming.

  “Okay, soldier, up you get!” I commanded. “Here’s a limber.”

  “No. No.” He shook off my hand and rolled back down. I slithered into the hell-hole myself and grabbed his arm but he managed to escape again. This would be a task, I realized.

  I clambered up and stopped the limber. “Got a soldier here. He can’t walk. Let’s get him on that.”

  Obligingly, probably because he saw my three stripes, a Driver dismounted and we both grabbed at the soldier. He shook us off again, so I gave him a pretty brutal kick and we lugged him to his feet. Together, the Driver and I got him over to the limber and heaved him up on it. “Now hang on tight,” I ordered, and left.

  I’d been promoted to Sergeant on the 10th of October, but I’d hardly noticed. When they told us, the Major gave us all an extra tot of rum to celebrate. Everyone seemed pleased.

  Although still only October, it was damned cold. And rainy. Belgium must be the rainiest country in the world. Since arriving here, I’ve spent most my life in the rain, wet through. I don’t know how I avoided trench foot, but I’ve always been careful to dry my feet at night. And our firing line wasn’t as bad as those trenches where the Infantry stood in water all day, day after day, week after week.

  As I shuffled along, others tried to hurry past, cursing the stretcher bearers for being so slow on the narrow board track, flanked by shell holes filled with water and deadly mustard gas, waiting for the splash of any carcass or a living body to drown. I hated Flanders mud, a particularly sticky and squelching kind that could never be traversed without these duckboards. Did I ever bless our engineers, over and over. They had to keep replacing blown-up sections every night. Dreadful job.

  Before dawn we arrived at our new set of guns left by the British Artillery; we had left our own at Vlamertinghe. A Sergeant briefed me on this position, ending with, “Bloody good luck, mate.” He and his men shuffled off into the night. Now we all just wanted to fall over on a cot in some billet, but of course, there was no billet to be seen. Instead, we faced our next job.

  The 35th Battery had been ordered to move these new guns a hundred yards further to the front. Who knows why? But those were the orders.

  Sure, I thought to myself, you just try to move a ton-and-a-half gun through this mud — up to your knees the minute you step off the plank road. And here, we were a hundred yards off it. Just as well the night was black, though admittedly shafted with flashes of gunfire and the odd aerial flare. Our officers had come the day before to stake out a new position up ahead. I found Mr. Overstreet in the dark. “How do you want to achieve this, sir?”

  “Sergeant Alford, they promoted you for a reason, you know. To command!” So this was not his forte? “Do what you think best.”

  “Right, sir.” Thanks alot, I thought to myself. Righto, the gun has to be moved one hundred yards? Fine. We’ll move it one hundred yards.

  Well, of course they would not move just one gun ahead — all our Battery had to get forward. I knew our one detachment could never do it alone so I spoke to another NCO in my section, Corporal Browning, and had both guns join up. We got our team hitched onto our gun’s trail, then his team hitched on to ours. Now, every man from both guns could haul on the wheels and drag ropes.

  Oh-oh, now I could see a rim of light on the Eastern horizon — just great! Haul two ton-and-a-half howitzers forward in full view of the enemy. Earlier in the night I had been blown into a ditch by an explosion, so I was covered in mud, and freezing as well. But I lent a hand as all ten of us heaved on the spokes of the wheels, strained on the drag ropes, and the horses pulled while our Drivers coaxed and cursed. We were worn out, no big farm dinners in months, so our energy was low. But somehow, our combined efforts inched first one, and then the other gun through the ooze and around the craters.

  Then the fun started. We heard a 5.9 coming and dove into the mud. It exploded close by. We lugged ourselves up out of the slime and went on pulling. Two minutes later, the next one landed just ahead. We dove again, and this time I saw that the two front horses had been torn to pieces, and one of the Drivers wounded. Two Gunners sprang to his aid. I issued commands, the men undid the traces, the Drivers shot the poor beasts, then rolled them off into a muddied shell hole. On we went with ten horses.

  Shells still burst around haphazardly. All through the night, as apparently every night, Heinie had kept up his sporadic bombardment. Seems he’d suspected movement and had registered his guns on these plank roads.

  The woun
ded Driver started to walk out, held up by another Gunner, back to the Brigade Aid Post, not far to the rear. The “no turning back” rule was only a provision for attacking Infantry.

  “Thank God Andy works for us and not them!” I shouted over the din of shells exploding, as the light grew.

  “Damn right,” shouted Red boldly. “Otherwise they’d have obliterated us long ago. Here we are on their target road, and they can’t seem to score a direct hit.”

  Oh-oh, was that ever tempting fate! “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Ralph!”

  With an almighty heave, we got the last gun squelched forward into its position. I turned and looked. The last howitzers were following, a good ways back. But in the faint dawn, all I saw was the terrible morass.

  Craters everywhere in the hellish landscape were filled with destroyed guns and corpses. A body floating by itself — when you only see its back — is not so bad; what I hated were the blown-off legs and arms, floating. And the poor horses! Lying bloated, legs in the air, mostly ravaged by rats, tattered bits of hide catching any breeze. My brother had told me about vultures in the Boer War. Would they ever have a feast here! But no vultures in evidence, just millions and millions of rats.

  Over on that plank road, stretcher-bearers kept coming back from the front trenches with men moaning, crying out in pain. They’d pause every now and then, putting down their heavy loads, and beg water or rum from us. The last of the night replacements of Infantry kept trudging past, forward into the trenches. What the hell would they do when they got there? Absolutely no way of attacking anything, let alone the village of Passchendaele, ahead on its slight ridge. Strategically important? But just as at Hill 70, just as at Vimy Ridge, the British hadn’t managed, the Scots hadn’t managed—and now, I suppose they wanted us to manage?

  The Jumbo, the recce officer, had found us an abandoned German blockhouse for shelter, so that’s why we had moved forward. Now, try to wheel this British gun around, which was in rough condition, having been subjected to hard use. But one thing, rain never hurt a howitzer. Which of course was lucky in this swamp they call Belgium.

  So we got the gun deployed, which was almost laughable: we were so worn out trying to tug on the spokes with our last ounces of energy, it was like one of those comedy teams you see in the moving pictures. And beyond caring. Go ahead, hit us with a direct HE, I think anyone would have said. And well they might! All our guns were crowded together, exposed on this one patch of relatively dry, high ground near Passchendaele.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Gauchin-Legal, Oct 10-12: In rest billets.

  War Diaries: 10th Brigade CFA

  “Your brother? When did you hear, Edward?”

  “BSM Jones called me into his office this afternoon. He’d just heard it himself. During an attack, he said. Wounded. And then, last week...” Edward sat, slumped on his cot. “Poor Mum. She begged us both not to go. And now...”

  “I’m awfully sorry, Edward.” What else could I say? His only brother. He had often spoken of him with such affection, and even, yes, admiration. I didn’t know his mother, but now, she only had one son alive.

  “I feel like going out and getting drunk!”

  I didn’t blame him in the least. Luckily we were in billets well back of the lines, outside a small town called Gauchin-Legal, awaiting the next fight.

  Those soldiers who survived, every year and a half or so, got a longer leave to go to Paris or London, but the officers got more. During our respite behind the lines, with discipline somewhat relaxed, we got to bathe, sleep in, draw new kit or mend our old, see properly to the horses and mules, play some sports, and try to rid our minds of the horrible images, before being thrown back to face them once more. In the summer, there’d even been a Divisional Sports Day, in which Edward had distinguished himself. And now...

  “Look, I heard some fellows went to an estaminet in the little farming village a mile away,” I suggested. “Pretty awful, they said, but lots of beer and wine. Want to try it?” I thought I should support him in his expressed desire, even though I wasn’t much on getting drunk myself.

  Edward looked up at me and nodded. “Let’s have a celebration. My treat.” That’s how Edward was: wanting everyone to be happy. Warmed my heart.

  Well, I got permission and before dark, off went our gun, all five of us, down a track into the village to seek out this estaminet. In a small village square surrounded by ruined houses, a sign: “Beer and Wine, Bière et Vin” beckoned us towards a nondescript farmhouse. We went in.

  More or less what I’d been led to expect: a fairly forlorn room, four long wooden tables and benches with clusters of Gunners and Other Ranks. The largely barren walls boasted shelves containing glasses and a couple of pasted-up pictures.

  Once inside the door we were pounced on by the robust French owner who looked capable of controlling any drunken altercation that arose, a frequent happening in these establishments. With what might be interpreted as a smile, she ushered us to a table near the open fireplace. In it burned the smallest logs I’ve ever seen, not near enough to liven up the place. Harry and Jim ordered beer, but Red and Edward and I split a bottle of wine at two francs a bottle. A solemn toast was offered to his brother, who gave his life for our cause.

  I had been worried about Harry and Jim coming along — would their squabbling ruin the party? — but no worries. Jim took a big long slug and rose. “Here’s to your brother, Ed,” he said soulfully. “I’ve asked myself over and over, what kind of God or Providence would stand idly by and allow all this to happen? How in the name of heaven could all this be part of a grander scheme, like the preachers say? How does good ever come from all this senseless and violent destruction?”

  Who could not agree with that, but it took us in a philosophical direction that precluded any jolly celebration.

  “Let’s not dwell on my brother,” Edward said.

  “Yes,” I begged, “we’re supposed to be here having a bit of a party tonight. Let Edward forget his troubles. We don’t get to party often!” In the back of my mind, I still harboured inhibitions from Momma and the family, and indeed from most of us in Shigawake who didn’t hold with going to bars. English pubs, though, with their cheerfulness and conviviality, I did like. But this just looked like a place to get drunk in — which was, of course, Edward’s avowed aim.

  We fell to discussing the concert we’d seen soon after we had arrived at our rest stop. A British regiment was putting on a show, and our Commanding Officer had arranged for us to be ferried over to watch it. We plunged into a more cheerful discussion on the good points of that fairly professional review with its many and varied offerings, and soon finished our beer and wine, so Ed ordered more.

  “That there men’s chorus was pretty damn good, I thought,” spluttered Red. “They sang the best.” Red, stalwart, afraid of nothing, was a soldier we all respected. He looked the part too, square jaw, handsome profile, every inch a hero, though his red hair and eyebrows were pretty distinctive.

  “That female impersonator — by golly, I thought she was just something!” Harry chirped up. “What about you, Jim?”

  “I dunno, Harry, I never was much taken with fake women,” mumbled Jim, eyeing the waitress who had brought us our drinks — well, I say waitress, but really a harassed French housewife whose husband had probably been killed. Her wild auburn hair disguised a lot, but when she turned around even the masses of red lipstick could not conceal her tight lips and dead eyes.

  “Well, you’ve got some real women here.” Edward smothered a grin. That tough-looking owner and her beat-up waitress were hardly specimens to admire. But I imagined that was what this war drove them to.

  “Why are ya looking in the direction of that waitress, Jim?” teased Red. “She’s sure nothing to write home about.”

  “I don’t think any of us are going to write home about this evening, do you?” I quipped, but noticed that my words were getting slurred.

  Before long, the owner came
over and whispered to Edward, who was by far the best looking among us, with Red not far behind. I noticed Jim twist his scrawny body round to look, and then saw Edward shake his head.

  “What did she want?” Red asked.

  “What do you think?” Edward said, and nudged me.

  We all looked at each other. Harry alone grinned. “She wanted to know if any of us wanted to go upstairs with her. Right Ed?”

  We looked at each other in astonishment.

  Ed nodded. “But I couldn’t figure out how to say we’d never be caught dead with the likes of her.”

  A bit harsh, I felt, but then, war hardens the best of us.

  Right then, down the stairs came a skinny girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and undernourished. Red hair, like Ralph Rideout, and a small mousy face like a chipmunk. But no mistaking her likeness to the owner. Behind, a few seconds later, came a sergeant who rejoined his table, to applause.

  I wondered how that made her feel.

  Ed looked at Jim. “Now there is someone more appetizing.”

  Hardly, I thought. We fell to discussing girls back home, and Jim took the chance while we were engrossed to wave the owner over.

  I saw Ralph staring at the daughter, leaning against a sideboard and brushing back her long red hair. She picked up a tankard of ale and downed a good slug to buck herself up.

  Ralph stood, swaying slightly. “What’s up?” I asked him.

  “She looks just like my sister.”

  And yes, now he mentioned it, we could also see a likeness there, her tall forehead and red hair especially.

  The owner, having spoken to Jim, crossed to her daughter, and jerking her head at Jim, motioned her up the stairs.