by Thomas Wood
I didn’t know how to feel in those few moments where we had been taken prisoner. I felt despairingly powerless, stupid even, that we had managed to make it this far, without the help of anyone apart from an irate French woman, and we had succumbed because we had walked past a hedgerow that hid a lone German soldier.
He began to make his way over to me, tucking the two revolvers that he had recently acquired, just behind the leather belt that I assumed kept his belly from bulging out of his tunic. I stared down the teasing barrel of the P.08 pistol, better known to me as the Luger, as he began to leer at me, the closer he got. The Luger was a prize that we all wanted to get our hands on, known for its superior build quality and incredible accuracy, it was a weapon that the generation before us had also sought after in the Great War. We had been warned against it however, there were horror stories of booby-trapped Lugers, and invisible memos that flew around German High Command that had ordered the summary execution of any soldier that had been found of being in possession of one. All the tales that we had been told had come from a foreign land, one that we had never visited and probably never would, there was no way of verifying the stories but equally there wasn’t enough evidence to refute them either. So, we just went along with it.
As I stared down the barrel, I became fixated on it, and the face behind the pistol slowly faded into the periphery, so eventually it was just me and the gun. I focused on it, not entirely sure what my intentions were when the time came for me to do something about the situation that we were faced with. I was thinking of trying to swipe the weapon away from him, hoping that Clarke and Red would hop in to help me when I did it but, I was relying too heavily on the fact that they were up for it and that they would have enough energy.
I felt the hand begin to rummage around in my belongings for a few moments, but I daren’t look down to inspect what he was doing, for fear of antagonising him, or giving something away. Instead, I fixed my eyes on his and let him do what he felt was necessary right now. He needed to feel in control, if he was confident that we were submitting to him, he would, at some point, let his guard down, which is when I would pounce.
He cooed mockingly as he took my binoculars from me, and sarcastically began testing them out.
“Do you know how popular these will make me?” he began chuckling as he placed them around his own neck, “I can almost see your coastline from here Englanders.”
He stood in front of us for a few moments more, parading the binoculars around as if he himself had just captured the Crown Jewels. Red and Clarke had looks of utter indignation and total dejection scarred across their faces and I was glad that I hadn’t made a move for this man’s pistol as I was fairly confident that these two wouldn’t have been able to back me up, they were that tired.
“Come on, we’re going this way…this way.” He began wafting his pistol up the hill, in the direction we had been heading, before steering us round along a path that carved up the middle of a wood.
We did as we were told, with Red ahead of me, Clarkey behind me and the German bringing up the rear of our bewildering patrol, all the while keeping the Luger raised up, ready to blast the back of Clarke’s brain stem from the rest of his body.
As we were frogmarched away from our capture point, my hand knocked into my webbing and made contact with something hard, steel-like. Using the back of my hand to run my touch over its shape, I suddenly realised a very grave error on the part of the German. He had taken the binoculars that would have made him incredibly popular amongst his peers, but he had failed to take the revolver from my webbing that meant he might never get back to his peers to tell the story.
The humiliating march seemed to continue forever, and I wondered if we had just been captured by a member of the Wehrmacht who himself, like us, had been separated from the rest of his army. Maybe we were all as lost as each other. The overwhelming sense of stupidity seeped its way back into my being, questioning myself as to why I hadn’t called this man’s bluff, instead of waiting for the rest of his platoon to come bursting from the trees. Maybe he was feeling as nervous as us, one man, in control of three men, with nothing but a few rounds of a nine-millimetre parabellum to stop them from overpowering you. The parabellum round was, like all bullets really, utterly terrifying to me, not least by the very name it carried. Para Bellum or Prepare for War, scared the life out of me, and I would have been quite happy to have spent the entire war without having to face the prospect of one embedding itself in my skull.
I wondered whether I would ever have the guts to use my holstered weapon that was still in my possession and queried if the German would spot it at any second and simply disarm me in the same way he had with the other two. An exchange of fire began to erupt in my mind as I debated with myself whether I should do the brave thing, the right thing, and put a bullet in this German’s head, or whether I should go with gut instinct and survive, by either playing innocent about the revolver’s existence, or simply handing it over to my captor.
The meanderings of my mind were brutally interrupted by a ruckus just behind me, once again, my mind taking far too long to process that something was amiss. Fortunately, my body was able to react far quicker than my brain was, and I spun around on my heel so fast that my neck began to crack and snap as I looked round.
Clarke was lying in a thick bush that we had just passed over to our right and he began scrabbling around as he tried to find his feet once again, like he was struggling to stay afloat and beginning to drown. Even in the short time that he had been in the foliage, he had already managed to accumulate an impressive array of cuts and scratches to his hands and face, with one impressive wound already dripping all over the luscious green of the bush’s leaves. I wondered what had happened and, because of the German’s inaction, assumed that it was him who had pushed Clarke into the shrubbery.
The other alternative was that Clarke had thrown himself in there in an attempt to escape, or to provide us with some sort of cover. Either way, he began to pull himself to his feet and managed to stumble three or four paces forwards before three of the dreaded Parabellum rounds exploded into his back, sending up a fountain of red as they did so. Clarke crashed back into the undergrowth, before wriggling his way further into the wood, with which he was rewarded a fourth, and final round into his neck. I wondered if Clarkey had seen that I still had my revolver, and that what I had just witnessed was an incredible display of courage and bravery. I deliberated if he would have assumed that I had known it was there, or if it was merely an attempt to get the German to use up a few of his precious bullets.
Whatever Clarke’s motivations had been, he was now dead, lying face down with a mouthful of dirt, blood pouring from the back of his tunic and it was now my turn to try and match his audacity.
The world around me seemed to slow, to match the speed of my brain, or it could have been that my mind suddenly managed to catch up with the rest of the world, the pure adrenaline that had kicked in being all I needed to pull myself out of my dreamlike staggering.
I reached for my holster, feeling like I wasn’t in control of what I was doing, merely a marionette with someone else manipulating my strings. I felt the cool steel of the Enfield No. 2 service revolver, that had been with me since my first day in France, as I locked eyes with the German, who began to turn his smoking Luger in the direction of his two remaining captives.
The Enfield sat almost perfectly in my hand, the large grip meaning that it morphed into the shape of my palm and more than made its presence known to me. I had practiced the motion of taking the revolver out of the holster quickly and bringing up to about waist height to fire off a few rounds, becoming quite good at it in training. They weren’t in real life scenarios though and I soon found myself beginning to flounder as I tried to lock eyes with the German. Eventually, the revolver was at the side of my waist and I began applying pressure to the trigger until I felt the air around me change and a loud bang resounded. At which point, I squeezed twice more on the trigger, w
atching with amazement and fear as the German’s chest began exploding like a tank shell hitting soft ground. He still came at me though and I flinched as I watched a burst of light erupt from his pistol, causing me to wince as I waited for the explosion of pain from his weapon.
No such pain came, nor any further rounds from his Luger. I watched and panted as he began tottering around on his feet, like a young calf who had just seen the light of day for the first time. He started to fall towards me, causing me to keep my revolver raised, in case I caught the flicker of movement around his trigger in his last attempt at murdering his enemy.
I looked into the whites of his eyes as he started to die, but still he refused to fall. I admired him in a way, keeping calm and collected as he stared at his killer, but also making sure that the bloke who had killed him was always in doubt as to whether he would fire off another round as vengeance, or simply to make sure his killer never forgot him.
It did not take him long to reach me and, as he did so, he crumpled into my arms, draping his hands over my shoulders like a long-lost friend. He began to pant in my ear as he did so, more mumblings at first, before he began to find himself.
“Bitte…Bitte…Please…” his voice trailed off into madman like whispering, and I lost myself once more as I raised the barrel of the Enfield into his chest and sent one final round piercing through his heart. His body thumped to the floor and no sooner had it done, than I had screamed at Red, taking my command to him as literal to myself.
“Run! Red get out of here! Come on!”
All dryness in my mouth had evaded me and my voice sounded as strong as it ever had done before. I knew that we must have been nearing some sort of German camp, there would have been no way that they had allowed him too far away on his own, and the shots that we had exchanged would have alerted them to our presence if not.
My voice was so loud as I called out to Red, that I was concerned that they had been even louder than the handgun rounds, so I feared the consequences of my ill-conceived actions.
I did not know which way to run, neither did Red, but all we knew was that we had to get out of the area immediately, and we began throwing our arms in all directions, as long as it meant that our legs were carrying us as far away from what had just happened.
I was just so relieved that I had made it out with Red by my side.
11
The human body is quite simply an amazing contraption and it is quite surprising what it can do when you feel your life is being threatened, especially when a few moments before all motivations and desires had simply been drained out of me.
I did not know where the energy seemed to be coming from, but what felt like for miles and miles, my legs continued to work in tandem, the muscles contracting and extending at just the right time to make sure that I was carried as far away from the danger zone as possible. The whole time that I pushed myself forward, thinking only of stopping once we had managed to find some sort of solid cover that would be able to stop German rounds, Red too was throwing one leg in front of the other, his head bobbing like he was trying to encourage himself to run faster, further.
The energy kept coming, the desire to stay alive now reignited somewhere in the very pit of my stomach and I began to detest the fear that was driving me forward, particularly as the pain began to increase dramatically.
My chest pumped itself hard up and down and began to put a considerable amount of pressure on my breastbone as it began to sear with pain. It was beginning to feel like my chest had been opened up and someone had their hand around it, and were squeezing, hard. The wheezing had begun to intensify also, so much so that I was suddenly finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. I was sucking in what I thought were large quantities of oxygen, only to be hindered by an apparent incapability to utilise any of it. Before too long, my pace began to slow considerably, before I dropped to a rapid walk.
Red slowed alongside me, “You alright, Sir? You need to stop?”
“No…No…” I panted, “We need to keep moving…Maybe we could stop the sprinting for a while now though, eh?”
“We must have covered enough ground by now anyway Sir.” His tone was comforting, reassuring to me that he wouldn’t just leave me behind, he would have my back for as long as was possible.
As we slowed, the pain began to flow all around my body, as if my breastbone was sharing out the agony it was in but multiplying it in the process. My limbs began to feel impossibly heavy, a dull ache slowly giving way to the more concerted effort of trying to bring me to my knees. The scratches and bruises that I had sustained as we crashed through the undergrowth began to find ground and started to sting, but the pain was nothing to that I was feeling in my head.
With every heartbeat, I swore I could feel the blood pumping up to my brain, each time threatening to burst through the walls of my skull and spill out all over the floor. It was probably unlikely, but it made me feel like I was getting weaker by the second, I desperately needed some sort of liquid, and preferably some food to go with it, and I would be needing it fast.
Red came to an abrupt halt, coming to rest on his left knee, which I was more than grateful to replicate.
“What’s up?”
“We’re coming towards the end of the wood, I’m worried about what might be immediately outside it.”
He had a point, we had just been taken captive by a lone soldier who had hopped out of the other side of the wood, but this side could have been the holding point for the rest of his company, it was something that I hadn’t even started to consider.
“I reckon we should approach slowly, keeping low and when we reach the edge, on our bellies. What do you reckon, Sir?” The ‘Sir’ had seemed like it had almost been an afterthought to him, as if he had completely forgotten himself and who was meant to be in charge here. I marvelled at him for how switched on he was, especially after little sleep and next to no water for quite a long time now.
“Red, consider this a battlefield promotion. Congratulations Lance Corporal.” I wasn’t sure if it was my place to do so, but I was in charge here, so if it came to it, I could even announce the surrender of this small part of the British Expeditionary Force, if I wanted to. Here, in this moment, I felt almost like a Field Marshall.
“Cheers, Sir! Shall we get going then?”
I let him lead the way, especially as now that his mood was buoyed he was more likely to spot something than me, who was completely ruined, both physically and mentally. Hunched over, we waddled our way to the point where the trees suddenly became so sparse that it opened out into a field. The last thirty yards or so was carried out on our bellies, stopping every few seconds to turn our heads towards the opening and listening for any tell-tale signs of an enemy resting point.
There were no noises from in front of us and perhaps more importantly, there were none behind us either, so we carried on dragging ourselves through the twigs and dead leaves from last year’s autumn until we reached the perimeter.
“There’ll be water there. I can guarantee it.” I looked across at him to see Red smiling back at me like a little boy who had just been told he was going on the biggest adventure of his life. I had looked at him more for a reassurance in myself, that I was seeing the village that he could see and not some mirage that my dehydrated body wanted to see.
About half a mile away, across a single, open field was the boundary of a small village, but densely populated with buildings all tightly packed in together. I began to dream about all the different things that might be in the village; a bakery, a butcher’s and most importantly some sort of water source. From where we were situated, neither of us could discern as to whether there was any movement in the village, but the distinct lack of any vehicle tracks nearby meant that there was a good chance that this village was not yet under German occupation.
My musings about what we might find in the village began to progress, to the wistful hoping that we might find some friendly locals that would welcome us in with open arms, befo
re pointing us in the direction of the rest of our forces.
I tried to refocus on survival and what our next steps should be if we wanted to still be breathing tomorrow. The overwhelming urge to leap up from where we were and leg it to the village and throw myself at the nearest French grandmother I could find had to be suppressed.
“We should wait till the light fades. I can’t justify running across an open field like that in broad daylight. We don’t know who might be there.”
I hated having to play the pessimist, but it was something my father had always encouraged me to do, particularly so after I had joined the army.
“Always assume the worst,” he had said on more than one occasion, “then, if it all turns out to be a better situation, you would have planned accordingly anyway.”
As if he had heard my Dad’s voice ringing in my ears, Red suddenly piped up, “Yeah, we don’t know who might be in there.”
Staring at him in a trance like state for a moment, a mixture of surprise at his statement, but also of being too tired to look away, he spoke at me once again, like he was the officer in charge here and not me.
“Get your head down, Sir. I’ll wake you in an hour or so.”
No sooner had I managed to plonk my head on an uneven and uncomfortable bedding of leaves and twigs, Red was gently shaking at my shoulders to rouse me from my unconscious dreams. Silently, we swapped over and, as I listened to his soft breathing slowly getting louder, deeper, I allowed myself a brief respite; I thought of home.
My Dad had been able to prepare me as well as he could have done from his own experiences of war. But mine had already been so vastly different that I began to debate whether any of it would be of any use to me anymore.
