by Thomas Wood
After we had sorted ourselves out with a spot of water each and making sure all our weapons were full to the brim, ready to pour a devastating display of firepower on the Germans, we sat with our backs to the wall, just waiting. From where we were in the upstairs room of the farmhouse, we had one small window that looked over the entrance to the courtyard, which we would look from as our guard post, and use that to gauge when to make our presence known.
For a while, it sounded like the Germans had retreated all the way back to the forest, as I couldn’t make out any sounds at all, not even the rumbling of half-track engines. Just as I was to peer out of the main window across the fields to see where they were, the first lingering voices reached my ears, harshly calling out to each other to keep their eyes peeled for any stragglers left behind.
A young corporal who was with me, angled himself at the window to peer out into the courtyard, using the shadow of the corner of the room as cover. He ducked back down and whispered to us.
“Five of them in the courtyard at the moment. Rifles on their shoulders, having a ciggy.”
Good. If the first few were being cocky, then hopefully the rest would be too and, seeing their confidence they would all resort to shouldering their weapons and having a bit of rest and recuperation.
“More coming now, half-tracks coming in behind them.” He paused for a few moments, “The half-tracks are open-backed Sir.”
Another good thing. The plan was to let the first two half-tracks into the courtyard then, as the third passed below the window, to drop a handful of grenades into the back, hopefully completely disabling it and blocking the other two in for a while. We would then burst out into the courtyard, lob a few grenades in all directions, firing rifles from our hips and hopefully catching them all off guard before we exited out into the forest through a hole in the wall at the rear of the courtyard.
It had all seemed so simple when I was explaining it to the Captain but, as the time got closer for the heroics, I couldn’t see any way that we would survive, maybe one of us would be able to sneak out on a fluke, but realistically, we would all be dead before the grenades went bang.
“Ready Sir?”
“Lambert, I didn’t realise you’d stayed!”
“Yes sir, took a piece of glass to the head. All bandaged up now, see?”
“Sir,” interrupted the corporal, “Stand by.”
Without removing his eyes from the courtyard, the corporal began laying his three grenades out at his feet, each one quaking as the last of the half-tracks approached.
Voices began calling out to each other more confidently now, guiding the half-tracks in and sharing cigarettes with one another.
Silently, the final three of us in the farmhouse made our way downstairs, where we were met by the Medical Officer we had seen earlier on.
“Good luck boys,” he rasped, his cigarette still not lit, “I’m going to stay here.” He barely looked up from his table as he began bandaging a seeping wound on a man’s upper arm.
We stood by the door, waiting and waiting for the grenade blast in the back of the half-track. Sergeant Lambert pulled the Bren from the table and rested it on his hip, “I’ll go outside first. Just get rid of those grenades.”
“Aim for the half-track at the front,” I said to the other man with us, “I’ll aim them at the groups of troops.”
He nodded, just as an almighty blast rocked the whole area.
“Go!” Lambert smashed his way through the door and began rattling off uncontrolled bursts in as many directions as possible. I was last through the door and the grenades of the bloke with us had already begun fizzing their way through the air towards the half-track.
I surged across the courtyard, towards the hole in the wall and lobbed my three grenades towards two different groups of soldiers as they presumably all caught up on each other’s escapades from the earlier attack.
The fireball caused by the grenades in the half-track almost singed my eyebrows and the blast threatened to knock me to the ground. The total surprise on the faces of the Germans told me everything, we had managed to catch them completely off guard. A lone man emerged from the barn, Bren firing from the hip, before his whole body convulsed and he fell to the ground.
More explosions rattled off behind me as I swung my rifle off my shoulder and pulled it up into a fire position. Just as I turned, I watched as Lambert sunk to his knees, revealing a German standing behind him. My hands began slipping all over my rifle as it became a race to see who could get a round into the other one first. My finger found the trigger and I snatched away at it, the rifle bucking and almost hitting me in the face with its recoil. The German fell, just as I heard the dying screams from Sergeant Lambert ring out, “Go! Get out of here the lot of you! I’ll sort this!”
My head clattered into the wall and my helmet was sent spinning off as I charged deeper and deeper into the forest, just as I heard one last, humbling thud of a grenade to mark the end of the latest gunfight. I wondered how many men we had lost, as I thundered through the forest, only stopping when it felt like my chest was going to give way.
I leant up against a tree and threw my insides all over the bed of drying leaves, as I realised that no one was following me. I was the first and last one through the hole. I was the last survivor of the farmhouse gun battle.
I regurgitated a little bit more of my stomach lining as the image of Sergeant Lambert going down flashed across my mind, as did Private Evan’s body and the contorted mess of Sergeant Greene’s leg. My own legs began to seize up at the thought and I knew that I would have to keep moving to have any kind of hope of evading capture.
It was then that I realised that I didn’t have my rifle with me, noticing I must have dropped it as I squeezed through the small hole in the farmhouse wall. As I picked up my weary, deadweight legs, pushing onwards in search of some friendly faces, I began to mourn the loss of another, much loved, friend.
20
I had felt alone before, but now I was facing true isolation, totally on my own, no one to amend my mistakes or correct me if I went wrong. Just me and my own brain. I had no one, I had nothing. No rifle, no ammunition, no way of putting up any sort of a fight, just an ever-decreasing motivation to want to get home, a desire that I could see waning completely in the next five minutes or so. I was beginning to become so downcast that I could not see a way out of it, I didn’t want to see a way out of it, not anymore.
My body flinched as I heard solitary shots ringing out from the farm, one by one as they made sure that the bodies who had inflicted so much damage wouldn’t suddenly get to their feet only to cause more death and destruction. I was sure even the Germans were slowly becoming tired of that now themselves.
My legs continued to move without my brain really giving much thought to where it was I was heading. I stopped, just for a moment, to try and inject some initiative into my senseless wanderings. I tried to work out where the farm exactly was and from there come up with the logical direction of the village, where I assumed everyone else had gone, but I couldn’t, only succeeding in confusing my tired, underpowered brain, which in turn, sent great droplets of tears streaming down my face in despair.
I didn’t know which way to go, I had no reference points or guides on which way to turn. There didn’t seem any point in me carrying on anymore. I thought about just waiting where I was and hoping that before too long, the Germans would venture out into the forest and pick me up. At least that way I would be watered, fed and the prospect of rest wouldn’t seem so much like wishful thinking any longer.
The anticipation of finally being able to give up and get my head down suddenly seemed to grow exponentially as I started to hear voices from ahead of me. I resisted the urge at first to walk towards them, not wanting the Germans to think that I was the spearhead of some sort of attack, so began to crouch down, to sit against the nearest tree that I could find.
The voices grew louder though, until almost begrudgingly, I realised they were voic
es that I recognised or, at least, a language that I recognised. It must have been the others who had escaped the farm and had started to regroup just ahead, and maybe I had been walking in the right direction after all!
As quickly as I had sprinted from the farm a few minutes ago, all thoughts of giving in totally evaporated, and I found myself being drawn to the English voices that became clearer and clearer as I stumbled towards them. My new-found energy and enthusiasm of wanting to stay out of the bag and firmly on the friendly side of the frontline caused me to start jogging, closer and closer to the friendly voices.
It didn’t take me too long to latch onto one voice in particular, a Geordie voice, who began to call me by name.
“Over here Sir! Come on Lieutenant!” called out one voice before another, louder voice overlapped him.
“Alf! Come on mate! Come on Sir!” I would normally be incensed at Red calling me by name in front of other ranks but, right now, I didn’t have the energy or the willingness to say anything, besides, it felt good to have a friend calling out for me, rather than just one of my men.
“Come on! Come on! Follow my voice!”
I found myself suddenly returning a grin that beamed its way out at me through the trees, I was so glad to see Red there and still alive too.
“Quicker! Quicker Sir!” called the voice of the man lying next to him in a slight indentation in the forest floor. I pushed on harder than I ever had done before, becoming overwhelmed by the pain that stabbed into my breastbone as I ran, each breath becoming more laboured and difficult than the last.
My knees sent a burning up through my thigh and wobbled at every pace that I took. In a flash, it all became too much for me and, losing my footing, I stumbled and clattered to the floor, rolling a few feet before coming to a stop. Immediately, I began crawling on my hands and knees the final forty yards or so to where Red was lying, and from there, they would have to carry me to the village, if there was any sort of regrouping going on there.
I kept my head down, only looking up every now and then to where I was going, in the hope that I would be able to spur myself on to crawl faster.
Quite abruptly, I felt the air pressure around me change, and it was no longer the cool air of the late afternoon that I was experiencing, but a warm liquid that began to rain down on me, hitting the floor with such an aggression that it momentarily regained flight, before hammering its way back to the floor. Half a second later, the warm liquid was replaced by the lighter pattering of soil as it began to scatter itself far and wide in a fine dust.
I almost stopped breathing as I stared at the backs of my hands, still on my hands and knees. I seemed incapable of taking in breath and passing it to my lungs, as if the oxygen just stuck at the back of my throat. The sight of the human blood was unmistakable. The urge to look up was unbearable but at the same time it was the last thing that I wanted to do right now, I didn’t want to see what I knew had just happened.
The treeline of animated, calling faces, grinning ones, was gone. Wiped from the earth. All that was left now was a smouldering crater, a furrow of death. The demonstration of the devastating effects of a German mortar had made my mouth dry up completely and I sat on my hands and knees like a frightened dog, not daring to move.
I tried to focus on my breathing as stars began bursting in my eyes, my hands quivering and stomach shaking more violently than it had ever done before. As I breathed I sucked in the aroma of death through my nostrils, the last remnants of Red’s brain matter that still hung in the air, each breath battering my lungs, leaving little reminders of Red on my internals as I forced them in aggressively.
My mind began coercing my body out of the shock of what had just happened, and forced me to my feet, which took me far longer than I could have ever imagined. I stood like a toddler, unsure if the next step I took would be the one to send me crashing to the floor and falling flat on my face. I just stared for a minute or two, maybe longer, just standing there dumbfounded, like those poor souls I had heard about in Pompeii, frozen by the lava just going about their daily business. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why, but I could not peel my eyes away from the gaping hole that was in front of me that, a few short moments ago, had been home to two very much alive men.
I took my first stumbling step, followed shortly by my second, each one being slightly steadier than the last but the same could not be said for my breathing, which became more laboured with every pace I took.
I didn’t hear any of the mortar rounds that had continued to fall around me, each one crashing to the ground without a care that my whole world was quite quickly disintegrating every single day, hour and minute that I continued to be alive. I didn’t feel any of them splashing dirt all over me, but suddenly became aware that I was caked in a thick layer of dirt and dust, clinging to my skin due to the adhesive effect of my perspiration.
I didn’t hear the round, I didn’t feel it either; I didn’t feel myself being flung through the air like a ragdoll, or sense my body crumpling in a heap on the floor near the crater that had, until recently, housed Red’s beaming grin. I couldn’t feel any of it, I did not have time to think, there was no time to feel sorry for myself. Everything just went dark.
*Break*
Slowly, I started to feel things once more as a gentle breeze began to dance its way through my hair, softly making it sway in the late spring time wind, gently tickling me awake. The breeze felt quite cold as it passed over me, instantly sending goose bumps right the way up my body, encompassing me completely in its chill.
My ears felt heavy and stuffy, the only sound I was able to hear was my heart slowly thumping and my faltering breathing gasping away, but I was too dazed and confused as to whether I was dead or alive to make any attempt to try and clear them.
Gradually, reluctantly, I opened my eyes, which felt heavier than if I had been asleep for days on end and I had to make a concerted effort to keep them open save only for blinking. They quickly overflowed with water as the brightness of the sun caught them off guard and I turned my head to one side, waiting for a cloud to clothe the sun before attempting to take a proper look around.
I was laid out, flat on my back, my limbs sprawled out in a star shape, like I was waiting for the burning fireflies against the inky black satin of the night sky to appear, as I had done so many times as a child in fields not far from my home. I marvelled at them, the way they appeared to twinkle, sometimes even catching one as it shot across the night sky, making me want to whoop and cheer at the display put on for me. They were so surreal, each and every time I looked at them they seemed to be different and all I wanted to do was reach out for one, grab it and put it in my pocket to take away with me. I longed for them to appear now, as the light of day began to fade slightly, as the warmth a handpicked star would give would be welcomed right now.
I sealed my eyelids shut as another phase of nausea soon threatened to manifest itself as vomit again, the world around me seemed to be swaying from side to side, very slowly, but still there was a noticeable movement going on inside my mind.
It was then that I began to notice the preliminary, weak metallic twang of blood as it began to permeate through my lips and spread itself around my gums. I tried to lift my hand up to my face to stem the steady stream of claret that had begun pouring from my nose, but the signals were not getting through. My whole body seemed to feel heavy, totally lifeless. It was quite possible that I was already dead, but my mind hadn’t quite left my body yet and that it was only a matter of time before that too, was snatched from me as I surrendered to the eternal rest that I so feared.
I wasn’t dead, I couldn’t be. There was no way that I would have been able to feel the amount of fear that I felt when I first heard the squeak had I, in fact, been dead already. The squeaking of rubbing leather was unmistakeable as it creaked its way over towards me. It was obvious, the owner was making no attempt at hiding where they were, the pair of boots completely confident that all of the enemy soldiers hiding i
n this wood had been completely wiped off the face of the earth. The audacity and assurance that the leather boots possessed infuriated me and, had it not been for the paralysing fear of being found, I would have got up just to assert that we weren’t all merely pieces of meat lying on the floor.
The squeaking of the leather boots got closer and clearer, quite quickly being joined by a series of other boots, all mimicking the noises of the first pair. As the noise from the boots got clearer and louder, so too did the sounds of chatter, laughter and the general camaraderie of soldiers. As always, the accompanying linger of cigarette smoke came last, taking slightly longer to waft its way up my nostrils as it fought with the natural barriers of the trees.
I found myself laughing, internally of course. I had fought with such vigour and ferocity these last few days, making every attempt not to be killed or captured, I couldn’t bear the thought of giving someone the satisfaction of parading me as a trophy of their latest kill, or being marched back into a foreign camp where the ridicule would be unbearable. But, despite all that, despite all the fighting and perseverance, here I was, about to be killed lying on my back, half asleep. I supposed that I should have seen it coming, in some ways I had expected it, I just felt disappointed in myself, I always imagined that I would be a little bit more courageous when the time for my death came.
I tried to distract myself by focusing in on the squeaking leather, listening to every slight movement felt in the boot as I tried to work out how many pairs of feet there might have been. Three, maybe? Possibly even ten? There was no way of knowing, without opening my eyes and taking a good look around, a risk which I wasn’t willing to take, especially as I knew that the boots would be accompanied by rifles and submachine guns that wouldn’t hesitate to rip bullets into my body until I was drained of all my blood.
