Twenty Five Million Ghosts

by Steve Aitchsmith

  I couldn’t really understand what I saw. The German trench was gone and in its place was this huge hole, a deep gouge into the land with smoke still issuing from the bottom.

  “Go around the mine crater, boys,” yelled the officer. We worked our way around it and found ourselves in the German rear reserve trenches. They seemed to be deserted. In small groups we started to explore them. I was with the officer, the familiar chap and two young lads who just looked ashen and frightened, possibly this was their first attack.

  As we approached the steep stepped entrance to a dugout shelter the two lads dashed in. The rest of us, all three in unison, called for them to stop but they paid no heed. Within seconds there was shooting from inside. Every firearm has its own distinctive pop and this was not the sound of smellies being fired. We heard groans and thudding sounds. Then German voices chattering urgently to each other.

  I dropped a Mill’s bomb into the dugout. Then the other chap threw one in as well. Two explosions later the officer listened then we all threw in another one each. When the dust that billowed out cleared a bit, the officer called into the dugout, there was no reply. We went in, it was really deep and looked as if it was brick lined. Among the smoke and throat searing cordite fumes we could find not a single whole body. Bits and guts were splattered about and items of equipment lay twisted and torn. It was impossible to tell friend from foe and even difficult to tell human remains from other detritus. We didn’t linger.

  As we re-emerged into the trench there was a leg, from the knee down, laying on the floor. No trouser, just a boot, a British boot.

  “What’s that?” said the officer, I bit stupidly I thought.

  “It’s a leg, sir,” said the familiar chap. “A good British leg carelessly left behind in the urgency of the attack.”

  “Well, whoever owns it has hopped it by now,” said the officer. We all looked at each other and just giggled like schoolboys.

  We couldn’t see anybody else. The officer checked his watch and exclaimed we’d been in the dugout for fifteen minutes. It had only seemed like seconds. Chronological awareness is always an early casualty of battle.

  The trench, like all trenches, zig zags because the crenelated profile avoids long straight lines in order to limit blast. From around the corner we heard German voices. The officer raised his revolver and we worked our bolts.

  An old man wearing German uniform, who looked like he belonged in a sanatorium of some kind, shuffled around the corner. He stopped in surprise at the sight of us. The officer shot him in the chest. He just stood there for a second and then crumpled straight down. There was urgent shouting from around the corner and a Mill’s type bomb on a short stick was thrown round it towards us.

  We darted round the corner behind us to avoid the blast. We only had two Mill’s bombs between us and threw them back to where we had been. By chance two other Germans, younger this time, were just coming round the corner to check the effect of their bomb. They took the full blast.

  Taking a serious risk, we hoisted the officer in the air so that he could get a view of whatever was happening. We only kept him sticking up for couple of seconds.

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “Our men seem to have pushed further on into German lines. But the Germans are back in this trench and manning some quick fire guns on our second wave out in no man’s land.”

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “Buggered if I know, what do you think?” he asked back at me.

  This was new, an officer asking me what I thought. I said, “If we push on we’ll catch up with our men but be trapped with them behind German lines. The Germans here will decimate our second wave. I think we should attack the machine guns and try to save our second wave ’cos they’re getting slaughtered at the moment. If we silence the guns we save our second wave and stop our first wave getting trapped.”

  He looked at me almost caringly. “Good lad. Yes. We three take on the whole German regiment. Not bad odds.” Then he touched each of us and said, “Lads, if we don’t make it know that it’s been an honour to fight alongside you.”

  “Save it for the angels,” said the familiar chap. “Let’s kill some Hun.”

  The rest is like some monstrous hazy dream. All three of us in full unrestrained bloodlust. We shot, we bayoneted, we stamped, bit, kicked, tore, screamed, gouged and gorged on a feast of insane violence.

  “Lads, you’ve done it. I don’t bloody know how but you three just won the battle, this bit anyway, all on your bloody own. Calm down, we’re here now.” It was an officer from the second wave. We were all of us crazed. We must have looked horrific, all of us splattered in gore. I swear our own officer had a chunk of flesh hanging out of his mouth. Somehow we’d silenced three machine guns and allowed the second wave to reach here.

  The officer in charge of the second wave ordered us to return to our own trenches. “You are all wounded,” he said. “Head back for treatment.” He gave us a hastily written note to confirm his order. The second wave moved on. The third wave was strolling casually across no man’s land.

  I was bleeding from what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the right side of my gut, I don’t remember this happening. The officer had several ugly looking slashes across his face and blood running from his leg into his puttees. The familiar chap had a few teeth missing and one eye closed. We were all limping. We happily clambered over the top and started back to our lines. The men in the third wave looked at us inquisitively and voiced encouragement.

  “Gas, gas, gas.” That fearful shout from somewhere. I glanced about and saw the awful yellow cloud slowly rolling across no man’s land towards the German trench. Oh, shit. It was our gas. Some bloody fool was releasing gas onto our own men. War progresses through a series of cock ups. Battles are won by the side that makes the least mistakes.

  “There’s a clear spot,” shouted the familiar chap. The officer was barely conscious as he walked. I could move only slowly because of the wound. The big man picked the officer up onto his shoulders and then lifted me off my feet in a kind of side hug. He started to run and I’ve never seen anything like it. He was fast and agile as if he was at an athletics meet. Our weight didn’t seem to slow him at all. He ran us at speed to a clear portion of our trench where he unceremoniously threw us in. He then sat down by us and said, “I suppose I’ve got to get the tea now, have I?”

  “Speedy,” said the officer slowly. “That’s you now, lad. Speedy the brave, Speedy the valiant, Speedy the saviour, Speedy the char wallah. Two sugars, my fine bold fast friend.”

  We’re all in the forward casualty pen now. I learned Speedy’s real name, Maurice Van Duke, but everybody just calls him Speedy now. He thinks his family were probably from Holland a few hundred years ago but he doesn’t really know. The officer’s name is Lieutenant Simon Penn, he says he has asked for us to be posted to his command when we’re better. When he’s better, more like. Since he’s an officer he’s already been shipped off to a care home in Scotland. Rumour has it that the OIC third wave has written us all up for medals. He thinks we saved the day. I think we were lucky to save ourselves.

  We’re on a ship now, me and Maurice. We’re being shipped home to fully recover before being reposted. We’d first been moved to a hospital in Boulogne, there I got a letter for both of us from Simon. Yep, I’m now on first name terms with an officer, this war will completely mess up the class system before it’s over. Simon gave us his address and invited us to visit.

  “Not me,” insisted the grave Maurice, now and for always nicknamed Speedy. “I’m not going to try to mix with people like that. Simon will be alright, he’s our mate now. His family will still be snooty posh and won’t know how to talk to us without being patronising. They’ve probably got food we won’t even know how to cut let alone eat.” That made me laugh.

  New Penn Court Manor, Ware, Herts. Yes, maybe. I might visit.
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  ***

  I put down the journal and rubbed my eyes, I was tired and a little emotional. This was my maternal grandfather talking to me. Strangely, I recognised him; He wrote in the changing tense and included quoted speech, a style that I thought made my mother’s letter unusual. He was writing a journal but also telling a story.

  John, Jack? Speedy? His was a time that nicknames were common. So much so that some names came with a nickname already attached. All Johns were Jack just as anybody surnamed Clarke got called Nobby, heaven knows why. Nicknames were the common currency and used like pronouns. Nowadays I’ve met people named Jack on their birth certificate, I think that’s a modern practice since we no longer much apply nicknames. Maybe we’re all too self-centred to bother thinking up a name for somebody else.

  I hadn’t read any dark family secret yet. I decided to take a nap and then continue through the night. I slept on the sofa and dreamed that Jack was talking to me except I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He was smiling and tried to hand me a Mill’s bomb but I refused it. He stuck it in his jacket pocket, he was dressed like a typical working man of his time in rough trousers, cheap jacket, white neckerchief and cloth cap. I tried to ask him what he wanted but he morphed into a uniformed soldier and marched away whistling. The tune was ‘Brother Bertie Went Away…’

  I awoke, a tad amused by the dream. I went to the bathroom and washed my face. I then went back, made a cup of tea, grabbed a box of coconut cakes and returned to the journal.

  ***

  We landed in port at Folkestone two days ago. On the quayside a busy team of doctors and nurses assessed every casualty. Some lads could walk and others were on stretchers, some were already dead. A doctor decided that Speedy would need to go straight to Guys in London if his sight in one eye were to be saved.

  As he was led away he turned back to me and called, “Jack, meet me in the Cumberland.” The Duke of Cumberland was a pub near to where we both lived.

  “Every Friday, Speedy.” That reply told him that if we both checked the pub on Friday nights then eventually we’d meet up there.

  It was decided that I would probably be further harmed by travelling so would stay in the local hospital. That turned out to be a field hospital just outside the town. Not exactly a fine modern hospital but compared to where I’d come from it was luxury.

  I was told the bullet was still inside me. The doctor said I was lucky because it was just sitting in some fatty tissue and not moving. Had it been elsewhere then the trip back to England would have killed me. I told him that the guns in use at the front should normally rip completely through a man but he said that sometimes, if the round had been slowed by hitting something first, or travelling through somebody else, it could come to rest inside somebody. He said we should hope it wasn’t a dum-dum, split at the nose to make it disintegrate in the target, but he was fairly sure it wasn’t.

  They operated the same day. When I returned to mindfulness I was on a field bed in the field hospital, which was a big tent in a field so both things were aptly named. A very pretty nurse sat on the side of the bed, she was about ten years older than me but that still made her young.

  She put her hand on my arm. “You’re fine. The bullet was in one piece, nothing vital was hit and it came out smoothly. Lucky you.”

  “Can I have it as a souvenir?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, no. It has to be sent away to be smelted and made into another bullet.”

  “Oh, I see. What size was it?”

  “Well, there’s the thing,” she smiled. “It was a .45 calibre Webley round. It was a bullet from a British revolver.”

  I laughed. She was used to soldier’s humour because she laughed with me.

  “You are an angel,” I said to her.

  She smiled. “No, I’m a nurse and you are a wounded hero who thinks he’s falling in love but is just relieved to be alive. You are our hero.” Then she did something unexpected, she leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, my mother does that. She left and I didn’t see her again.

  That wasn’t the only unexpected thing, I found a purple ribbon tied round my private parts. I roared with laughter when I found it. It must have been put there during the operation.

  My guffawing brought the matron. More intimidating than a dozen Hun, this woman.

  “What’s so funny, my young lad?” She was grinning.

  I held up the ribbon. Some of the other patients were leaning up in bed and also grinning. The frightening matron laughed.

  “Tell him,” called out one of the men.

  “You, my boy, have been awarded the Victoria Cross. So have your two friends, I’m told.” She just stood there grinning. The tent-come-ward broke out into applause.

  I was told that there would only be a short regimental ceremony to present the medal. I was advised that the normal bells and whistles presentation was impossible because the King was busy being King and there was a war on. I was also told that the medal would be sent to my home at a later date because it took time to make and for now I could wear the relevant ribbon if I wanted.

  A Staff officer came to confirm the award and reassured me I’d be back at the front as soon as I was better.

  “That’s reassuring, sir,” I told him.

  He wanted to know the details of the fight but I didn’t know them. I couldn’t say we shot and hacked our insane way through men who didn’t expect us to be there and we did it all while we were out of our minds with funk and shell concussion.

  I made up a suitably noble fictional account of how we stood proudly, bayonets thrust forward, jaws set against a barbaric horde intent on eating British babies if we let them pass. No better way for a man to die and all that bilge.

  He puffed up his chest, saluted me and left. I had to resist the urge to shout out rude words after him.

  The citation, when it arrived later, said that with no thought for personal safety we had directly challenged and engaged an overwhelmingly superior enemy force and had thereby neutralised resistance against our third wave and thus prevented an entire battalion being lost to a well equipped and disciplined foe. I was impressed.

  “You’ve got the best medal, mate,” said one of the men.

  “Yes,” I said, “but I’ve also got the dreams and nerves that go with it.” He just nodded at me. A soldier understands. We also understood that I had to keep that to myself and hope it didn’t show. I didn’t want some staff office twat deciding the hero was now a coward and shooting him.

  I’ve got a few bob now. As a private pig class, now pig class VC, I get one shilling and thrupence, yes 1/3d, a day. Soon I’ll get an extra sixpence for being brave. Even though the army stops a few pennies to pay for the uniforms we so carelessly damage in our battle clumsiness, it adds up. With no other expenses to pay, I’ve come back to about twenty-five quid in the post office, I’m feeling well heeled.

  I was discharged yesterday and given a third class ticket to London, a hard wooden bench was good enough for my heroic backside it would appear. I spent the night waiting by the station with a good view of the sea. Here’s a weird thing, when it was very quiet in the night I could hear the guns over the channel. Not the rifles, of course, but the big guns. It made me shiver or maybe it was just a cold night.

  I slept most of the journey to London. The train came in to Victoria, not its normal terminus I was told. I didn’t have my smelly with me. Normally, the army expects you to be fully battle equipped when on leave, just in case you find a German in the garden. Not so if you’re wounded, then you don’t even travel in uniform, they don’t want the injuries to be too obvious to the civilian population. There’s been talk of a badge of some kind so that you can show you’re an injured soldier recovering at home. I was informed that when I got back to the war I would get a lemmy to replace the smelly. That’s a large magazine rifle, twice as many bu
llets to end lives with.

  I felt just as fit as ever so I walked home from Victoria, it took about three hours or more. The wound ached a lot and seeped just a bit but otherwise everything was fine.

  Mum and dad were delighted to see me. I told them about the VC and dad almost wept. He’d fought in South Africa so he had some idea of what I’d experienced. ‘Some idea’ is about as close as anybody can get. Trying to explain the feelings proved impossible. I’ve come to the conclusion that’s because not only is this war unique in its monstrousness but this kind of thing, the emotion after battle and killing, it is not a simple thing.

  I’ve heard of people who can’t come to terms with it but I think I can. I have dreams and I have small angry outbursts. I’m beginning to suspect that the real internal horror comes not from fear, revulsion or shock. I think it comes from shame. I’m ashamed at what I did. I’m ashamed of what I didn’t do. I’m ashamed of what I will do when I get back there. I’m ashamed of being a hero and I’m ashamed of killing the school master, who was probably, nay, almost certainly, a good man. You can’t explain that. Shame at killing and shame at not killing and shame at being alive. Shame at the two lads who entered the dugout, shame at having to be carried by Speedy, shame at the gore and the mud and the carrion smell that permeates my whole being. Most of all a deep penetrating shame in knowing that in my soul I enjoyed it, my God I enjoyed being free from the restraint and rules of normal life.

  I will simply block it out. It’s there, of course it’s there, but I can place it in a part of my mind where it does no harm and I don’t need to react to it. I can turn off my humanity. That’s not good but it’s better than crying and screaming. When all of this is over maybe I’ll take a long break or maybe leave London altogether. I’d enjoy farm work, I think. Maybe I’ll hide in the countryside. Maybe I won’t need to, how likely is it I’ll survive the next engagement or the one after that?