Hot, late summer. They came through villages where people lived in rubble. The country between them was mostly empty, only a few farmers still trying to save some of the harvest. The soldiers stripped tomatoes off the vines as they passed. Crossed a field full of melons, big as footballs, heavy as heads. Still moving, they scooped the seed out with their hands and threw it into the under-growth. Fran remembers passing stringy gobs of it, moons of yellow-green skin gnawed clean, discarded in the dust. The juice got everywhere, gummed his fingers together, his eyelids, mixed with the sweat on his cheeks and neck. Couldn’t escape the sweet stink of it.
At night they heard shelling, but Fran could see nothing in the surrounding dark. They marched on in silent single file, each holding the bayonet scabbard of the man in front.
– I had Thorn ahead of me. But I don’t remember thinking about that at the time, mind.
That is what memory does; it organises. Fran lifts a warning finger. Sifts and turns the events over, he says, and it is extraordinary: how he finds them everywhere now, Thorn and Butler, in all the little details.
Fran knew the names in his platoon by then, and that he was the youngest. One or two had been fighting since the beginning, including Butler, but not their platoon commander. Ash only had six months on Fran, and though he never gave his age, Fran remembers Butler ran a book on it, and most men laid odds that he wasn’t too much older.
– Twenty-two I would say, and in charge of men like Thorn. Twice his age, easy.
The Leicesters had camped in a wood, by a clearing. Tall silver-brown trunks, the afternoon air among them thick and hot. Fran’s battalion was bigger, bivouacs spread far back into the trees. Sun getting low when they arrived.
– First walking, then waiting.
Thorn brewed tea for them and Butler slept. Curled on his side, eyes hidden in the crook of his elbow. All around him, other men were doing the same and Fran was tired, too. Pain in his legs and his back, from the marching, the heavy pack. The tea was sweet, clumped with milk powder, and he was glad of the sugar; still felt the weeks of his illness. He remembers lying down, his limbs sore and heavy, but his eyes stayed open.
Beyond the trees lay the ridgeway. They were to take it south to north, with the tanks behind them. At the top of the first rise was a village, capturing it their first objective. Two tiers of pale stone houses, farm buildings below. On the slopes leading up to them, vineyards and olive groves; good cover, at least while the sun was low. Fran says he watched the village through field glasses before the light faded: crawling with Germans.
He watched Ash, too; his conversations with the Major, the other platoon commanders. Taut expression on his too-young face, eyes anxious or angry, Fran couldn’t decide. Made him nervous to look at him, and the assault seemed a long time in planning. Two platoons, including Fran’s, were to take the farm on the eastern edge; three others were to approach the village from the west. Secure the lower tier, and they would have the back-up in place to take the upper. These were the orders they got eventually, but meantime no word was given, nothing happened. It got dark, Fran slept. Quieter out there than in the hospital.
– In the morning, again no movement. Not for a whole day, as I remember.
Rifle-cleaning, waiting. A seeming endless back and forth between Ash and the Major, the commanders further back in the field; only the signalmen kept busy. The sun set again.
– Dusk and dawn you were always edgy.
And when they passed there was no relief, he says, just the dull uncertainty of what was still to come. The shapelessness of it.
– I expected that, of course: not being told things.
They were often sent out not knowing much, but Fran insists this wasn’t blind obedience, not for the most part. They were always guessing, interpreting, trying to slot their orders into a greater pattern. It was instinctive somehow, but unsettling, too, this incessant filling-in of the gaps. He didn’t like rumours; couldn’t help but listen to them. Heard someone asking Butler were they waiting for the tanks.
– As I remember it, Butler didn’t answer.
Fran was always terrified by the fighting. Says he’s not ashamed to admit it. But he shifts in his chair while he tells me, eyes on the trim horizon of hedge outside his window. So he was frightened, yes, but it was a relief when they finally got moving.
Two hours till dawn. Out of the woods, onto the hillside, through the olives and into the vines. Keeping low, moving quickly, Fran remembers what the platoon looked like ahead of him, stooped figures filling the narrow avenues; the low noise they made together, breath and boot. The sky was blue-grey on the eastern horizon and they were making good ground; just beyond the farm buildings when he heard it.
– Shell.
Like a bird singing, or a whistle. Stuttering. High in the air but coming closer. Fran was flat on the ground when the explosions started. Heard gunfire, too, coming from somewhere. Fran lay shocked and still against the cool earth, until the Sergeant screamed at him to start fucking shooting. And he did, but didn’t know at what; green of the vines in front of him, knotted wood twisted along the wires.
Noise gets in everywhere, he explains. Blinds, somehow; confuses.
– So they had us with the shelling. Fierce. Seems obvious now, but we weren’t expecting it.
His gun jammed, Thorn was next to him, the village above, and while Fran struggled to get his bearings, he heard the order to move. The men ahead were running uphill, bent forward, low to the ground. Fran was following when he heard Thorn shout behind him. A shell landed: a tug in the earth as it erupted, raining soil, something harder. Fran missed his footing, remembers falling, not landing. Flung downhill. It was still dark, but he could see the shape of Thorn now, struggling: down the slope where they were shooting. Terrible to be there, terrifying. Smoke and sharp torn leaf smell: tin and uniform between bullet and skin. He didn’t want to, but Fran slid towards him. Thorn’s arms were reaching forward, legs kicking at the earth, but he was held, mouth open, trapped in the wire.
– Push yourself up. Fucking push yourself up.
But Thorn didn’t hear him.
– And the shelling goes on all this time.
Fran had hold of the wire, saw the buckle snagged, Thorn’s weight dragging it down. Fran knew he had to lift him to pull the buckle clear, but Thorn kept moving, twisting away from him, slipping then sagging, snapping the wire taut against Fran’s palms. Too quick to hurt, he says. He just remembers his grip sliding when the blood started, then the panic. He shouted, kicked Thorn on to his knees and the buckle sprang free of the vines. Thorn was loose and he dropped, rolled away from Fran downhill under the dark leaves. The shelling went on and the other men had gone. Thorn was not moving now. Fran turned uphill and ran.
It was still dull blue in the tight spaces between the village buildings, sun not yet clear of the eastern ridges. The shells were hitting roof and wall, too close, and he couldn’t seem to move in the noise, it slowed everything down. Through a doorway out of the dawn, into a barn, dark and empty. Outside a shell struck. He still heard the high note of metal on stone before the bang, then nothing. The shockwave ran through him: silent air. Fran remembers standing in the sudden light and seeing beyond broken wall and grey-bright twisted shards: before him was Ash, shouting, silent, and cellar steps. Fran stood, then obeyed; ran down them.
He doesn’t know how long it took, before he could hear again. Could feel the shells bursting before noise returned, the walls above them shifting. Sounds were shattered, painful cracks inside his head. He held his hands against his ears, and the blood from his palms dried on his cheeks. It was bright daylight outside; dusty shafts of it came through the gaps in the door at the head of the steps. The air was hot and close. There were four of them down there, including Ash and Butler. Over fifty came up. Fran remembers thinking they must be somewhere. Wondering who else was lying in the vines.
When the shelling let up a while, Ash and Butler climbed into the room above, where the
re was a narrow window. Machine guns all along the top wall, Butler told him.
– Our mortar platoon had taken out a couple, but there were plenty more.
Ash was silent. No radio contact. He told Fran to see to his hands, left the cellar with Butler behind him, and soon after that the shelling started up again.
– What will we do?
Fran knew the face next to him, but the name was gone. His palms ached, the ragged lines of sticky black where the wire cut in; he wrapped his field dressing around them. The man next to him was retching. Fran looked away, didn’t want him to think he was watching. Remembers how his own stomach was sour and clenching.
It went on that way for hours. Endless noise, pain in his head and hands. He could hear them sometimes, in the few quiet minutes, the people still living there, the villagers. Three or four different voices, calling, crying. Couldn’t understand what they were saying, heard English voices, too. Shouting for the stretcher-bearers. He recognised the retching man, then. His stretcher propped up against the cellar wall and his legs laid out in front of him, twisted.
He doesn’t remember how long they were down there, kept thinking someone might come for him, stripped his gun down, got the mechanism working, then his hands started bleeding again. The noise stopped towards evening and it wasn’t until the light faded that he really thought it might be over. The stretcher-bearer was unconscious so he climbed out alone.
Up in the village, there were bodies he recognised on the streets. The Major was there already and Ash, Butler. Men who had taken the western approach and from the mortar platoons that had stayed below. No tanks.
The Germans retreated, they told him. Said it like they couldn’t quite believe it themselves, but they were gone. Apart from three prisoners. Old men with grey hair and iron crosses. They sat quietly in a truck, waiting, nodding; talking in murmurs to the corporal guarding them.
Fran was sent to the dressing station. He waited outside the long building that he thinks must have been some-body’s house. Inside were men with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, some dying, the stretcher-bearer among them. It was almost dark. The old people in the village came out into the streets and put flowers on the corpses.
Tea and food and painkillers and sleep. Fran remembers telling the orderly about Thorn, who said that the padre would find him. His palms were cleaned and dressed. They hurt but he could hold his gun. The wounded were driven back to the coast. Fran was among those who moved further north in the morning.
– It wasn’t the worst I’d experienced. It wasn’t that. The mugs of tea Fran made have skinned over on the low table between us. He stirs his but doesn’t drink. Tells me he’d seen dead before. Cleared away corpses, blackened in the sun. He’d killed and been shot.
– Like being hit by a hammer.
In a way he was lucky. The cuts on his hands weren’t bad, his ears were recovering, the cellar had probably been the safest place in the village. Fran pauses, looks down at his tie, his trousers, shoes. When he doesn’t speak, I count up the reasons he’s given already. He was young, he’d been ill, morale was low. Thorn, the only man he knew in his platoon, had died in front of him, and the shelling had been horrific.
Fran shrugs after I’ve finished speaking. Perhaps they do all have a part to play: perhaps that’s just memory, arranging things in the mind again.
They were on a road, following the line of the ridgeway. Two trucks, canvas sides flapping. Dry earth track, dusty, the truck ahead throwing up clouds of dirt which they drove through. The ridgeway was not yet secured, so they were to join with other platoons, a day ahead. Together there might be enough of them to make up a full battalion.
They were sick, a lot of them. The runs, throwing up.
– We’d won a battle but it didn’t feel like that.
Just degraded, somehow, humiliated. Leaning out over the sides of the truck, squatting in the undergrowth at the edge of the track.
It was normal to feel uneasy the day after. Most men would crawl into themselves a while, if they had the chance to, if they didn’t have to fight on. Fran said he could see it in the other men’s faces, the strain, and he knew the feeling, but that day he felt different. Not calm exactly, no. He searches for a way to explain.
– Like being suddenly high up on a clear day, is how I would describe it.
Set apart from the other men, standing there, watching. Unable to slot himself back in again. And the questions just kept coming.
– Why did the Germans retreat?
He found a seat in the truck beside Butler. He had been up in the village with Ash, might know something.
– You’re asking me?
But he did know, or had heard another rumour. Something happened, somewhere else: another, more important place along the line. Germans got the order to pull back to where they were stronger.
– Nothing to do with us. We were fucked. Fucking lucky.
– No tanks came.
Fran remembers how Butler looked at him.
– You don’t say.
The track was rough, narrow in places, and they made slow progress. Fran didn’t like to look ahead any longer, eyes preferring the land they had left behind. Below the road, the slope fell away in terraces, olive groves, and at the bottom was a river, running along the valley floor. He remembers looking at it often that morning, and noticing how other men did the same. Checking, reassuring. Swift glances down the valley to the river.
– All of us.
Finding the line of retreat. Calculating how long it would take to get back. Watching the water flowing steadily south and west to the flood plain. Held by the British. Safe ground.
Midday and they stopped to eat. Fran kept close to Butler under the trees.
– Of course he knew. The Major. There was no one coming for us.
– He knew they would shell us like that?
– Probably. We go and die, we’re creating a little distraction. It worked, you might say. Retreated, didn’t they?
Didn’t talk much after that, Fran says. Smoked a lot, everybody did. Blue cloud under the branches, shady ground littered with stubs. Fran couldn’t stop thinking about Ash and the Major, couldn’t take his eyes off the valley. Felt he was detaching inside, moving further away all the time. Here the terraced olives led like giant steps down to a house with a walled garden, sitting alone in the country, where the valley levelled out before the river. And once he had noticed that house, all Fran could think about was how could he make it down there without being seen.
Terraces about shoulder height, he could stoop, maybe bend at the knees. He couldn’t run very fast like that, but he wouldn’t have to crawl. The trees were heavy with fruit, dense green-grey leaves. Trunks split and twisted, branches reaching low to the dry grass. Fran says he imagined the blue sky seen through twig and leaf. Could picture it all already: what he would see if he were hiding beneath them. He let himself plan it, didn’t try to stop the thoughts, even when he saw Butler watching. His eyes sharp, face smeared, pale dirt gone dark with sweat.
The men climbed back into the trucks and Fran stayed back in the bushes. Pretended even to himself he was looking for a place to shit. Surprised at how easy it was, but not at all surprised to find Butler had stayed with him.
Clear of the road they stopped. Sat in the shadow of the first tier. Backs to the hill, they listening to the truck engines receding along the road above them. Fran checked over his shoulder. Couldn’t see them, figured he couldn’t be seen. When he turned back, Butler had already gone. He scrambled down the hill after him.
– Not that I want to say I followed him.
Or that he wouldn’t have done it on his own: never blame another man.
They slept in the dusty rooms with the broken windows. When they woke, the sun was getting low and they ate carrots dug from the kitchen garden, bitter lettuces that had gone to seed, dry-sour apples picked too early from the trees. Butler found wine in the cellar, pushed the corks in with his thumbs.
&
nbsp; – Ash is alright.
– But he sent us up there.
Fran heard the tears in his throat and hated them. Saw Butler’s smile, mocking. His teeth wine-black: hated him.
– He didn’t send us when he got the order. He delayed, remember? Maybe he got a lot of us killed, but then maybe Ash is the one that saved us. You and me. Couple more hours, couple more of us left over.
It was all so obvious; it didn’t seem worth crying about. Fran avoided Butler, lay in the cool shadow of the garden wall with the sun setting behind him, the sunburn flaking from his shoulders and arms.
– I was angry, I suppose you could say.
That someone had taken such a risk with his life. But then, he says there was little room for anger amidst all the platitudes. You were there to kill or be killed. Both, most likely. You saw death every day, and that it was random. No reason or pattern: most died, some didn’t. He couldn’t even say for certain that they were lied to about the tanks. At most, they had been allowed to find comfort in the rumours.
– I just wanted no more part of it.
Fran sits up straight. He squints out of the window briefly and then says he had no sense of just cause, no idea at the time.
– What the Germans had been doing.
And then he shakes his head.
– Listen to me. Making excuses.
Even if he had known then, he doesn’t think it would have stopped him.
– It was a cool calculation.
If they were going to send him up a hill to die, he would find a way round it.
It got dark. Neither of them could sleep properly. Fran remembers seeing Butler standing on the terrace looking up the line of the ridge, trying to guess where their battalion was. That they filled their water bottles together at the well, took more wine for the journey.
It was just after midday when they found the camp, and the men were eating. They hadn’t talked about what they would say, if they would try to justify or lie. He remembers Butler smiling.
– Temporarily AWOL, sir. Back now.
Field Study Page 11
