Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?

by Horace Greasley

  But he felt none of that, only disappointment. The one man he’d relied on had been Private Clough on top of the lorry. Two hundred rounds a minute that Bren gun could release and he hadn’t fired one shot. As Horace Greasley had stood alone in the clearing, firing shots at the Messerschmitt almost as soon as it had come into view, Bill Clough had shat himself, leapt the ten feet to the ground in one fluid motion and scampered like a frightened rabbit deep into the forest. Horace had faced the awesome firepower of the Messerschmitt alone, with only a single-shot repeating rifle against a fully armed aircraft with a rear gunner capable of ripping a man to shreds in a few seconds.

  Horace had been lucky, of that there was no doubt. But he’d only stood there because he thought he was being protected by his mate. He told the sergeant to keep Bill Clough out of his way for a few days.

  The whole section was loaded back onto the lorry and Horace was allowed to travel up front in the cab. Aberfield thought it wouldn’t be good for troop morale if Horace had suddenly started laying into one of his comrades.

  Horace caught snippets of Aberfield’s conversation with the driver, but most of the time he just stared into the fields. Swathes of yellow corn were dancing to a tune on the wind. Occasionally he took note of another road sign that told him they were retreating even further. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he thought, as he remembered the stirring lectures he’d listened to in the old clubhouse at the cricket ground in Leicester. The good old 2nd/5th Battalion Leicesters weren’t supposed to run and hide; that wasn’t what he’d heard from the officer as he’d described the glorious history of the regiment. And there wasn’t supposed to be a coward in the ranks – for that’s what Bill Clough was. How could he do that?

  Horace rubbed the bandage on his head. The medic had been right; the swelling had gone down but Jesus Christ how it hurt. After an hour they stopped by a river and Aberfield ordered the troops to disembark. They were just outside the town of Hautmont on the river Sambre. An old stone bridge crossed the river there and as the troops stood on the west side they received their orders from Aberfield.

  ‘The bridge is of strategic importance, men, and we have good information that Jerry will be trying to cross it very soon.’ Aberfield was wearing his white mask again; his words almost faltered as he spoke. ‘There’s a German patrol headed this way. We have a good few hours by all accounts, so dig in and get camouflaged up.’

  Horace and his comrades dug in for two days and two nights. They took turns to catch a few hours’ sleep but their rifles lay primed at the ready. The Bren guns were positioned on a small grassy knoll and manned by two of the older boys from the section. Aberfield was conspicuous by his absence, choosing to take up a position on the perimeter of the town with the radio operator. Halfway through the second day Aberfield and a sergeant returned with a dozen French loaves and an urn of warm milk. The men ate and drank voraciously; these were the first things that had crossed their throats for nearly three days. The battalion mess kitchen had been split from the company, its location unknown.

  It was six in the evening on the second day when the mood of the commanding officers suddenly changed. The tension in the air rose to an unprecedented level as they were informed that a German patrol was minutes away from the bridge. Horace arranged his camouflage tight around his head and pulled the rifle butt into his shoulder. He controlled his breathing and listened to the sergeant explaining that they were only to open fire on his first shot.

  Horace lay as still as he dared. He was aware of an eerie silence. The guns that had sounded in the distance, the lull of the traffic from the village that could be heard occasionally drifting in on the breeze seemed to have been frozen in a bizarre silent time warp. Even the birds had stopped singing as if somehow they knew.

  Horace spotted the first German cautiously approaching the bridge a mere ten minutes later. The information had been good – at last, it seemed, someone on the Allied side was getting something right. His finger hovered over the trigger as he slowly lined up the V sight into the chest of the enemy soldier taking his first tentative steps on the bridge. Another five or six Germans came into view. Horace felt beads of perspiration forming on his forehead. He was about to kill a fellow human being, of that there was no doubt. He’d gone past the point of no return.

  The first German soldier was now about half way across the bridge with at least a dozen of his compatriots treading nervously behind. Without warning a shot rang out behind him and the lead soldier’s head exploded like an orange, a fine red mist seeming to linger eerily above him as he fell to the ground. A volley of shots pounded into the patrol as Horace switched his sights to the second soldier. He squeezed the trigger, the rifle cannoned into his shoulder as the round discharged and the man dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the parapet of the bridge. Instinct took over. He didn’t have time to contemplate the absurdity of war or the young man’s family back in Berlin or Munich, how they would react when told their father, son, brother had been killed in defence of the Fatherland. Horace took out at least another two and pumped two more rounds into a dying body on the bridge decking as the unfortunate man made a last-gasp effort for his rifle. The Bren guns completed a job well done. The German patrol had been massacred. Horace felt strangely elated… he had done his bit without hesitation. A few cheers broke out among the men. Horace remained quiet.

  The sergeant major instructed Horace and three more members of the section to make safe the bridge – Army talk for ensuring that the Germans were in fact dead. Horace led the team of four – Ernie Mountain, Fred Bryson and section leader Charlie Smith – onto the bridge. His heart was pumping viciously now, a mixture of adrenaline and a little fear. He was sure the men following him could hear it. It was not unusual for a wounded or dying man to be clutching a live grenade, determined to commit suicide by blowing himself up along with any enemy in the vicinity. Horace had heard tales of dead Germans miraculously coming alive and taking out half a dozen careless Allied soldiers. He was determined to follow the job through and wouldn’t relax until every one of the soldiers lying bloody and still on the bridge was confirmed as dead.

  He looked back over his shoulder. The rest of his section had retained their positions, rifles trained on the bridge. He hoped they were as accurate a shot as he was, as he became acutely aware that his own body now stood in their line of fire. As he and his three colleagues now took up their positions, rifles trained on the German corporal’s head. Horace propped his rifle up against the bridge wall, knelt down and studied the German’s breathing – or rather the lack of it. He had watched the first body the whole time during the slow-paced walk over the bridge. Nobody could hold their breath that long, thought Horace. He took hold of the soldier’s uniform, one hand on the shoulder and one on the lapel of the tunic. Slowly but with a forced action he fell backwards and the German soldier exposed his body and face to the three men’s rifles. The shout went up.

  ‘Clean.’

  Horace breathed a sigh of relief. They took it in turns as they made their way over the bridge, carefully examining each body. They’d shot well. Not one German was alive. His colleagues were smiling now, visibly relaxing as one by one the enemy soldiers were pronounced dead. Young men – 18, 19 years of age. Boys.

  At the far end of the bridge something extraordinary happened. It was Horace’s turn again to approach the body, the last one, and the men adopted their now familiar positions, rifles at the ready. The German soldier lay in a pool of crimson. Fragments of skull bone, tissue and brain had splattered the wall of the bridge. Horace did not even take the time to gauge the breathing of the man. He was clearly dead and his body lay grotesquely twisted in an unnatural position face down in his own blood. Horace knelt, trying to avoid the steaming, sticky pool. He went through the motions.

  ‘Clean,’ came the cry.

  ‘What’s that?’ The section leader was pointing at the dead man’s midriff.

  ‘It’s a belt with writing on.’


  The soldier bent down to take a closer look as the rest of the men lowered their rifles. He studied the writing.

  ‘Gott ist mit uns,’ he spelled out slowly.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Horace asked. He looked over to Ernie Mountain, who spoke a little German. Ernie removed his tin helmet and scratched at his forehead.

  ‘Well, fuck me… unless I’m mistaken it means “God is with us”.’

  ‘What God do they worship then?’ asked the section leader.

  ‘They’re Christian,’ replied Ernie.

  ‘Fuck off, they can’t be. They’re evil bastards.’

  Horace sat on the small parapet of the bridge as the conversation continued. The men were genuinely amazed as it was eventually agreed that the Germans – the Nazis, the Huns – actually worshipped the same God as good old Tommy.

  Horace shook his head. It had never crossed his mind before. They’d read the reports, listened to the radio and watched the Pathé newsreels in cinemas up and down the country. This nation, these men, the soldiers and the SS seemed determined on world domination, intent on ethnic cleansing and eradicating anything that didn’t meet their ideology. They seemed to go against everything that the good book preached, yet here was proof they worshipped the same Lord – Jesus Christ, God, the big fellow – as the men, women and children in England.

  Horace stared into the faces of his stunned comrades. They weren’t religious men, far from it. But they’d been brought up in decent family homes and schools, with morning worship and prayers at night as they settled down to sleep and, no doubt, Sunday school too.

  ‘God understands German?’ Ernie asked.

  Horace nearly collapsed with laughter.

  ‘Apparently so. And French and Russian and Polish too.’

  ‘But he’s on our side, not theirs,’ said Fred Bryson as his brow furrowed. He looked around at his comrades as if expecting one of them to solve the puzzle right there and then. Four men. Four men who until that day hadn’t ever believed, hadn’t ever imagined that a Nazi could possibly worship Our Father, couldn’t believe that they’d find hard evidence such as the belt they had just stumbled across.

  Horace pointed to the body. ‘Hasn’t done that poor fucker any good, has he? Probably thought he was invincible with that belt on, probably thought he was afforded a little extra protection.’

  Fred spoke. ‘But the padre, he said we…’

  ‘Don’t go there, Fred,’ interrupted Horace. ‘It’s all a pile of shite and now you know it for sure. Just think about it. Think about it when you say your prayers tonight.’

  The men turned around and trudged back across the bridge towards their section. Fred Bryson lingered for a moment then removed the soldier’s belt. As he walked back to join his colleagues he threw the belt over the bridge wall and down into the swollen river below. He didn’t know why, it just seemed the right thing to do. This man didn’t deserve to be buried with such a fine Christian inscription… let alone one in German.

  An hour later the section holding the bridge was relieved and driven about a mile to the far side of town. The first thing Horace thought about was the hunger gnawing away at his stomach, and the second was sleep. The sergeant pointed across the field to an old dilapidated-looking farmhouse three hundred yards away.

  ‘You can kip in there, lads. It’s been checked out, not too clean but plenty of beds and running water. I think the present owners fucked off a few weeks ago when Jerry started flexing his muscles.’

  ‘Any grub?’ asked Horace.

  The sergeant smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ll find something, Jim. There’s a few tins lying around the cupboards and vegetables in the fields. I’ve even seen a few hens scraping about if you’re fast on your feet.’

  Fred rubbed at his stomach while his tongue caressed and moistened his lips. ‘Chicken and roast potatoes, lads. Sounds good to me.’

  ‘A little wine perhaps to wash it down with…’ Horace smiled. It was a nice thought; there could be a small wine cellar and an oil stove to cook on, maybe a few pots and pans. As they set off along the tree-lined, pot-holed track leading up to their sanctuary, he listened to the artillery shells in the distance. Perhaps he was mistaken but they seemed to be getting a little louder.

  The first shell exploded without warning. It had been fired from the west by the French Allies. The blast, no more than 30 yards away, knocked the men off their feet. Horace groaned as he was slammed into a tree. He lay still, shouted at the rest of his section and asked if everyone was OK.

  Fred rose to his knees. ‘Everyone’s fine, I think. No damage done.’

  ‘Get down, you idiot,’ Horace screamed as the second shell whistled overhead. It exploded harmlessly behind the farmhouse. For the next 20 minutes the forward section of the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicesters lay face down in the French dirt as artillery shells rained down around them. Aberfield confirmed the shells were coming from the French lines. Friendly fire. The phrase had been coined in the First World War. Grossly incompetent generals directing fire into an area where their own troops were. Lack of communication, trigger happy, friendly fire. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the section were wiped out by the very country they were there to protect?

  The men could do nothing; their fate was in their allies’ hands. Trees were flattened, the fields and forests all around pounded relentlessly. The noise was unbearable and Horace stiffened up as he heard every whistle from every shell overhead and wondered if one of them had the name Joseph Horace Greasley etched into its casing. It was the nearest he had ever come to death, and the sheer destructive powers of the big guns frightened him. He had never witnessed it close at hand before. He had seen an occasional destroyed vehicle and of course the pictures on Pathé News, but nothing had prepared him for the immense power of destruction he was witnessing first hand. Aberfield lay just in front of him, his hands covering his head. Horace sought a tree trunk for protection, figuring out that the hundred-year-old tree would absorb most of the blast of any shell landing on the opposite side of the field. To a man the whole section curled up in balls as tightly as they could or pressed themselves deeper into the contours of the land and prayed that it would all be over soon.

  And then it came. The shell with Greasley on it.

  Horace heard the faint whoosh in the distance; his mouth was dry in an instant and as the whoosh turned into a whistle it was louder than anything he had heard previously. The other men sensed it too. This shell was heading their way. ‘Take cover!’ screamed someone behind him as it came ever closer. The noise was unbearable; the shell was coming straight for them. Horace covered his head and cursed for mercy as it exploded in the middle of the track. He remembered the noise as a huge fireball plumed 30 feet into the air and then a split second later – darkness.

  Horace heard the groans at first. He had no idea how long he’d been out. It was silent now apart from a few birds singing. Those birds again, thought Horace. How do they know when to start singing? How do they know when to stop?

  Most of the men were on their feet. Some attended to their stricken comrades and applied bandages to head wounds and an odd broken bone. No one lay motionless that he could see. Miraculously they had all survived. They had made it.

  Horace tried to get to his feet. He couldn’t. He tried again lifting his body from his hips, aware of a hot sensation in the small of his back as he attempted to push his backside up into the air. Nothing. He couldn’t move. His back was stuck fast as if a huge weight was pressing down from above; his ammunition pouches bit into his chest. His worst nightmare, a broken back, life confined to a wheelchair. But somehow he sensed that was not the case. His back felt fine. He wiggled his toes. Fine. He bent his left leg from the knee so his heel pressed into one of his buttocks. It worked perfectly. The brain had sent the signal all the way down the spinal column and the leg had obeyed the order. Nevertheless he was still scared.

  ‘Help me, Fred! I can’t move.’

  His comrade walked over to where Horace
lay and his mouth fell open in amazement.

  ‘Fuck me, Jim, you’ve been lucky.’

  ‘Lucky? I… what?’

  Fred held out a hand, which Horace reached for and Fred dragged him out from beneath the stricken tree. A piece of artillery casing an inch thick, the size of a car tyre, had almost split the tree in two, embedding itself seven or eight inches deep into the trunk. The protruding bit of smouldering red hot metal had entered the tree parallel with Horace’s back, a fraction of an inch above it. It was this piece of French shrapnel that had temporarily disabled Horace. Fred shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Two inches lower, Jim, and it would have cut you in half.’

  The enormity of just how close Horace had come to death sank in and his breathing became laboured. He sat for a few minutes in silence, staring at the broken tree and the shell casing. He removed his webbing belt and his hands instinctively massaged his kidney area. He’d had a close shave, of that there was no doubt. He took a deep breath and eased himself to his feet. The drama was over, time to put it to the back of his mind and think of more important matters, like food.

  Twenty-nine men were grateful for an almost uninterrupted night’s sleep under a sturdy roof for the first time in a week, and each fell asleep on a full belly. They’d managed to catch two hens that that they’d cooked and shared between them. There had been eggs in abundance and their feast had started with a makeshift egg mayonnaise minus the mayonnaise but with onions and chopped tomatoes from the fields. The main course was a type of chicken stew. Several tins of unlabelled green beans went into a huge pan along with the chicken, salt, pepper and sweet corn. An unlimited supply of boiled potatoes filled the men’s stomachs to capacity and although they didn’t manage to find a wine cellar, the fresh water from a well at the rear of the house tasted as good as anything they could have imagined. Horace fell asleep content. It was amazing the effect a full belly had on morale. He remembered an expression by a French general from long ago, ‘An army marches on its stomach.’