by Mark Morris
He didn’t respond. Didn’t move. His body remained motionless.
Had he seen? And what would it mean if he had?
I stood there for another minute or so, staring at the dark mound of his body.
Then I went back to bed.
SIX
THE WITCH
‘Come on,’ Frank coaxed. ‘Come on, old son. That’s it. You know you want it.’
Stan Little, rain dripping off the brim of his steel helmet, chuckled, and was immediately shushed by the rest of us. He put a hand over his mouth, looking both contrite and amused. Squatting in the trench, plastered in clinging mud, which oozed up over the ankles of his boots, he reminded me of the Speak No Evil monkey.
The rat crept closer, its fur so slick with mud and rain it looked metallic. It was wary, but hungry too, and the gobbet of bread on the point of Frank’s bayonet was proving impossible to resist. Out in No Man’s Land, amid the mud and the corpses, the barbed wire and the shattered remnants of ordnance, it would be able to see nothing of us, hunched below ground level in our water-filled trench. Neither would it be able to smell us; the stink of death on the battlefield would mask our scent. But if we made too much noise it would hear us, whereupon it would be gone in a flash.
Like all the rats here – and there were so many of them they often scampered across our bodies at night – this particular specimen was a big bastard, but mangy and diseased-looking. Frank remained motionless as it moved to within a few feet of his bayonet, the tip of which was poking at an angle above the sandbags stacked on the lip of the trench. I glanced at the men. Stan had removed his hand from his face, leaving brown streaks, and was now grinning, his eyes almost feverish with excitement. The others, shivering in the cold, their uniforms soaked through and plastered with mud, their faces drawn with the effects of dysentery and exhaustion, were staring avidly at the lump of white bread, as if they wouldn’t mind snaffling it themselves.
After prevaricating for a moment the rat suddenly darted forward. As it clamped its teeth around the bread, Frank almost casually pulled the trigger. As ever his timing was perfect. As the rat turned away with its prize, the bullet from Frank’s gun transformed it from a living creature into a red explosion of unrecognisable meat. We watched it, or rather the bits of it, scatter across No Man’s Land. Geoffrey Ableman, a new recruit, barely eighteen, was so entranced by the spectacle that he forgot himself for a moment and raised his head above the lip of the trench to watch its progress.
Instantly there was the crack of a rifle from the German trenches and a bullet whined over our trench and smacked into the mud somewhere behind us. It might have drilled through Ableman’s skull if Reg Coxon hadn’t grabbed him and yanked him back down a split second before the bullet’s arrival.
‘That were yer one and only chance, lad,’ Reg told him in his broad Barnsley accent. He stabbed a finger at the sky. ‘Him up theer’ll not grant thee another one.’
As a grinning Frank descended the wooden ladder propped against the inside wall of the trench, the men surged forward to clap him on the back. His skill at ‘rat bagging’, one of the few things that kept us amused during the grinding hell of trench life, had earned him the nickname ‘Dead Eye’. The only member of our squad who didn’t come forward to congratulate Frank was John Pyke. As ever he sat a little removed from the rest of us, beneath the sheet of rusty corrugated iron that was laid over the top of the trench and served as our only shelter. Eyeing us balefully, Pyke was hunched like a gorilla over the brazier we used to keep warm and to boil water for tea. When I glanced his way he dipped his head, as if he was afraid I might hypnotise him.
It was early December 1915, and we’d been on the front line for five weeks. From when I’d first signed up to becoming a battle-ready soldier had taken around fifteen months. On 5th November we’d set sail for France, the men joking that although we’d miss Bonfire Night at home we’d be seeing plenty of fireworks once we crossed the channel. From Boulogne the eight hundred plus men and thirty or so officers who made up our battalion had boarded yet another rickety train, which had transported us to a railhead south-east of Abbeville in the valley of the River Somme. Although we’d camped there for the night with the intention of getting some rest before the next stage of our journey, it had been so cold that none of us had been able to sleep. Instead we’d walked around for hours, fully clothed and wrapped in our blankets, in an effort to keep warm. Another long train journey the next day, followed by a ten-mile trudge, during which each of us had been loaded down with equipment (rifle and ammo, blanket, ground sheet, eating utensils and other kit), had brought us to the village of Bellancourt. By the time we arrived in what turned out to be a filthy little place, the streets strewn with refuse, we were so exhausted and hungry that we’d been fit for nothing more than collapsing into our billets. Mine was a draughty barn, full of dirty straw, on the edge of the village, but I made myself a makeshift bed and fell into an immediate deep sleep. I woke several hours later to find my body covered in flea bites and the place swarming with rats, some of which had nibbled at my boots and clothes.
We spent the next few days marching from one village to another through thick mud and driving snow. It was so hard going, and the equipment we carried so heavy, that we were almost looking forward to reaching the front line just so we could have a break from putting one foot in front of the other. Although we’d only been a few days out of England, we were already having to endure appalling conditions. We spent most of our time hungry, wet, filthy and exhausted. We’d been wearing the same set of clothes since arriving in France, which was mainly because we didn’t have a fresh set and wouldn’t be issued with one until we reached our destination. In truth, though, even if we had had fresh clothes I doubt any of us would have bothered changing into them. For one thing, it was too bloody cold to get undressed (the sheep pens and barns, in which we were billeted, did nothing to protect us from the sub zero temperatures), and for another it would have meant having to carry our wet, mud-plastered, and therefore heavy, clothes in our knapsacks.
There were times, I admit, when I wondered if it was all worth it, times when I (probably selfishly) told myself this wasn’t my War, and when I asked myself whether I really had to go through all this. These moments usually came at the end of a long, long day, when I was more exhausted than I’d ever been, but couldn’t sleep because of the cold and the continual grinding apprehension in my belly. If it hadn’t been for my sense of duty, combined with the fear of what might happen if I did jack it in, I might well have given in to temptation and called it a day. And even then I might have given up if it wasn’t for the other blokes.
Because despite the hardships, and despite signs that the War was getting ever closer – or rather, that we were getting closer to it – the men managed to remain pretty cheerful, which both moved me and gave me a boost when I needed one. Granted, there were one or two moaners, and one or two who were clearly scared and trying not to show it (I admit to being one of them, but then I knew what we were in for), but I’d been lucky enough to have Frank, Stan Little, Joe Lancing and Doug Meadows as my constant companions. The five of us had formed a tight-knit group, within which Frank and Doug, in particular, could always be relied on to keep our spirits up. On our second day’s march out of Bellancourt, the peace of the French countryside (which was admittedly pretty dismal, given the horrible weather and the churned-up roads) had been suddenly shattered by a dull but persistent barrage of heavy guns in the distance. With perfect comic timing, Frank had wafted a hand behind the seat of his pants and exclaimed, ‘Would you pardon me, chaps? I think that bully beef stew has come back to haunt me.’
It probably doesn’t seem as funny written down, but we were in such a state of heightened emotion – almost delirious with exhaustion and jittery with the pent-up fear of what was to come – that we all collapsed with laughter, as did the men around us, the effect expanding outwards like a Mexican wave. Soon those who hadn’t heard the quip were laughing too, even if it was
simply at the sight of the five of us, clinging to each other in an effort to stay upright, with tears rolling down our faces. Eventually the officers in charge managed to pull us back into line, but even they were grinning. There may not have been much to laugh about in our immediate futures, but I’ll say this for the British Tommy: whatever the circumstances (and often, there was carnage and terror so overwhelming that in hindsight I’m astonished the survivors managed to remain even part-way functional) his spirit and sense of humour couldn’t be dampened for long.
As I said, it had been just over a month since we’d arrived in France, during which time we’d mostly been living in mud, sleeping in mud, even eating mud, because with no cutlery among our kit apart from our jack-knifes, we had to use our muddy fingers to hold our rations. In the five weeks we’d been in the trenches we’d already lost little Doug Meadows to a sniper’s bullet, and both Joe Lancing and Barty Trent to a shell, which had landed right next to them and exploded while they were on guard duty.
Losing our friends, and more particularly witnessing their deaths, was gut-wrenching, and something that even now I don’t particularly want to dwell on. Yet already – though it sounds awful to say it – we were starting to get used to the idea of life as an expendable commodity. Because there was something hideously unreal, even other-worldly about the trenches, I (and I know a lot of the other guys felt the same) found myself retreating into a kind of invisible bubble, viewing what was happening around me almost as if it was a hideously vivid dream.
Part of this was no doubt due to the fact we were all in a state of perpetual trauma. The daily shell bombardments, often augmented by rifle grenades and trench mortars, could sometimes last for three hours, and even putting aside the sustained terror of knowing that a direct hit could end your life (or worse, leave you hideously mutilated and in unimaginable agony – and my fear of this happening was no different to anybody else’s; I had no idea whether my glimpses into my own future made me immune or not), it’s no exaggeration to say that the sheer noise of the bombardments was almost enough to literally drive you mad. Unless you’ve directly experienced it, it’s impossible to put into words how awful, how overwhelming, that hellish din is. It makes you feel not only as if your thoughts are being shaken loose from your head, but as if your very soul is in danger of being ripped from your body. There were times, under bombardment, when I felt sure the noise alone would be enough to make my teeth splinter, my ear drums burst, my skull split in two.
It wasn’t just my hearing, though, that was temporarily obliterated during these nightly attacks; all my senses were as badly affected. The constant explosions would cause the ground to shake, my jittering vision to fill with nothing but the sight of flying mud and shrapnel, and the blinding flash of exploding shells. Often I couldn’t even see that much, because my eyes and nose would be streaming from the stinging effects of gas and sulphur. The drifting smoke would catch in my throat, making me cough until I could taste blood, and filling my mouth with a nasty chemical taste. At such times even my sense of touch was unreliable. There’d be nothing but shifting, shaking, sliding mud beneath my hands and feet, making it impossible to orientate myself.
With more mud buffeting my body from all sides, I’d sometimes feel as though I was drowning, unable to tell up from down. On these occasions, when it became impossible to stand upright, impossible to see what my friends were doing or hear what they were saying – impossible to function in any useful way at all – I would simply give up and sink into the filth and curl my body around the heart, which I always kept in the button-down hip pocket of my uniform jacket. Sometimes I’d clutch it in my hand and think about leaving, think about using the heart to project myself somewhere else, anywhere but here…
But I never succumbed to temptation. I was too afraid that if I did I wouldn’t have the nerve to come back. And even if I did come back I was afraid the temptation to take a break might come upon me again and again, with increasing regularity, and that the War for me would therefore become horribly protracted, the nightmare stretching on and on, to a point where even my ‘breaks’ from the conflict would become blighted by the terrible knowledge that at some point I’d have to return to it.
Although the War is long behind me now, the memories of those terrible times are still fresh in my mind. I’m still haunted by them; they still give me nightmares – so many, in fact, and of such intensity, that often I find myself wishing only for peace, for an end to it all.
But the simple fact is, I endured the trenches. All of us who were there endured them.
Well, that’s not true. Not all.
Some died, of course.
Others went mad.
And yet others were mad, or at least half-mad, before they even set foot on foreign soil.
Which brings us back to John Pyke.
After that night during our training when the heart became active, Pyke avoided me. He still slid me sidelong looks at regular intervals, but from that point on they were full not of aggression and intent, but of mistrust, wariness – even fear.
So I sometimes believed anyway. Because for all the times when I was convinced he had seen the heart in full flow, and was running scared because of it, there were just as many other occasions when I told myself I was being paranoid, and that his wariness was down to the fact that he was alone and outnumbered, and therefore worried that our little band of brothers might at some point gang up on him.
I don’t know for certain, because I never got to know him that well, but I’m guessing that back home, on the streets of Lewisham, Pyke had been a big cheese, a cock o’ the walk, the kind of bloke it was easier to back up than to oppose. Under normal circumstances, young blokes like Pyke who lived in tough areas would abide by the law of their particular jungle, every man for himself, with the strongest, usually bolstered by an entourage of weaker hangers-on, rising to the top.
The War, though, changed all that, and the prevailing mood from 1914 became one of all lads together, of local rivalries being forgotten in the face of a common enemy. The previously diffuse population of Britain’s young men had discovered there was strength to be had in numbers – which was bad news for men like Pyke, who’d become used to being top of the pile, having achieved their status through bullying and intimidation, and who now found themselves suddenly weakened by dint of becoming one of the herd. Now, when Pyke and his ilk tried to throw their weight about, they’d find themselves confronted by a single body of men prepared to stand together and defend the weakest. Some of these tough guys – the smarter ones – adapted; they bought into the group mentality and became better men because of it. Others, though, those who were too stupid, or too crazy, to conform, all at once found themselves ostracised and friendless.
Pyke was not only one of the stupid ones, he was also one of the crazy ones – and I’m afraid it was me who’d made him so.
All right, so maybe that’s exaggerating it a bit. Maybe it wasn’t me that had made him crazy, but the heart. And maybe the heart didn’t actually make him crazy. Maybe Pyke was already three-quarters of the way there, and the heart, combined with the effects of the War, had just nudged him over the edge.
All the same I felt guilty about it. And the likelihood that Pyke, if he had survived the War, would have remained a nasty piece of work, didn’t make me feel any less guilty.
‘Time for a spot o’ tiffin, I think,’ Frank announced once the back-slapping had died down. ‘Stick the kettle on, Pykey.’
Despite Pyke’s surly manner, Frank often addressed him in a breezy way, as if they were old mates. I knew Frank was doing it to wind him up, and sure enough Pyke flashed him a venomous look.
‘Do it yourself,’ he muttered.
Frank snorted a laugh. Aside from one or two barbed comments, he and Pyke had pretty much managed to steer clear of each other this past year or so. Today, though, for some reason – maybe because Frank was buoyed by his ‘rat bagging’ triumph; maybe because he’d simply lost patience with Pyk
e’s constant hostility – he was in a provocative mood.
‘You really take the biscuit, you know, Pykey,’ he said, still in that same cheery manner. ‘When it comes to priorities you really are arse about tit.’
The men were piling into the shelter now, huddling round the brazier to get warm, rain dripping from their helmets and clothes. Some, like Reg Coxon and Geoff Ableman, who’d been drafted in from other battalions and knew nothing of Frank and John Pyke’s past history, watched the exchange curiously.
‘Just leave it, Frank,’ I said. ‘It’s not worth it.’
As soon as Frank flashed a glance at me, I knew he wasn’t going to listen. After months of simmering silences, dark looks and the occasional muttered insult, clearly things, for him, had come to a head.
‘Why should I leave it?’ he retorted, and gestured disdainfully at Pyke. The big man was still sitting by the brazier, glaring up at us, a filthy, rat-nibbled blanket around his shoulders, his elbows resting on his thighs and his hands dangling between his knees.
‘Look at him,’ Frank continued. ‘He’s a fucking wet weekend. Like a fucking big kid he is. Harbouring his stupid grudge, as if it really fucking matters. As if it really fucking matters after all this.’
There were tears in Frank’s eyes, and suddenly I understood. He and Doug had been the battalion’s chirpy chaps, the ones who kept spirits up when things were tough, the ones who could always be relied on for a quick quip or a funny story. But now Doug was dead, and Frank, though he’d been trying to hide it, had been feeling the strain. And all at once he was at the end of his tether. He needed to vent. And Pyke, the dark, energy-sapping hole at the centre of our group, was the obvious target.
Jock McDaid, a thick-set Scottish engineer, who after the War would go on to become a Labour MP and serve in Ramsay MacDonald’s 1924 government, said, ‘What grudge is this then?’
‘Has tha’ ’ad a lover’s tiff?’ asked Reg Coxon, raising a ripple of laughter.
