by Thomas Wood
I had failed miserably in what had been my first piece of action. I had rooted myself to the top of a shell hole and had practically waited for another man to die, before I found myself motivated to do anything.
I wasn’t able to fire one single round to kill the murderous German that was clamping away at Etwell’s neck. And I had found it even more impossible to finish off the young German who had caught himself on the end of my bayonet. I was a totally ineffective soldier.
I wondered how much longer it was possible for me to last, and considered simply walking out of the trench there and then, so that I was no longer a burden upon the rest of my platoon.
In the short space of twenty-four hours, I had gone from local hero, the young lad who had volunteered to go to war, to downright coward. I just couldn’t understand why no one seemed to get the way that I was feeling.
It felt as if my brain had received a jolly good shaking, and all my thoughts were upside down and disorganised. I couldn’t imagine that anyone else in this platoon had ever had the same feelings that I was currently experiencing, and for a moment, I didn’t think that anyone had ever had the doubts and uncertainties over their capabilities that I was having, after Etwell’s outburst.
As if he had been waiting around the corner, hiding until the sergeant had managed to diffuse the situation, a major, who I did not recognise, came marching around the corner.
“Where is Lieutenant Fairweather, I was told this was his platoon.”
“Erm, he’s not here, Sir,” said Sergeant Needs, in a tone that was desperately hoping the major might take the hint that the platoon before him were not in want of being reminded that their Lieutenant was dead.
“Well, where is he then?” exclaimed the major, as if we were just one big inconvenience to him and his endless banquets.
I noticed that his uniform was impeccably clean, and that the only speck of dirt that seemed to be on him, was around the bottom of his leather boots, which looked like they had never been worn outside before that night. I didn’t envy the batman who would have to spend the rest of the evening scrubbing them up.
I almost felt sorry for the major, walking into the platoon that was so on edge that we could have been toppled over by a slight breeze.
Etwell was the one who took the initiative, suddenly bursting open a German crate and pulling out a pistol. He rummaged around with it for a few seconds, before lifting his arm out, deadly straight as if he was pointing out the invisible stars and fired the flare gun into the sky.
There was a slight pause, as the major looked around at each of us totally bewildered, which was met with equally confused glares as to what Etwell might do next. Suddenly, the flare burst on its way back down to earth, slowly lingering over the No Man’s Land that we had advanced across earlier.
A brilliant white light suddenly burst forth from the flare and Etwell had around eight to ten seconds to make his point to the major, before we were all plunged into the familiar darkness once again.
“He’s up there, major,” he said, stepping up on to the fire step for a moment, to look out over No Man’s Land. “You see that broken cart over there? I think Lieutenant Fairweather is the third body to the right. I’m not one hundred per cent sure though.”
We stood there for a moment, in total disbelief as to what he had just done, and I was sure that I wasn’t the only one who was convinced that he had just guaranteed himself a meeting with a firing squad in the morning.
For the second time in the space of five minutes, it was down to Sergeant Needs to calm him down.
“Alright, Etwell,” he said, beckoning him down from the fire step, just as the flare went out. “You’ve made your point. Sorry sir,” he said, turning to the major, humbly. “It’s been a long day for all of us. An emotional one too.”
“Yes, well,” the major almost scoffed, looking down his nose at the sergeant, “make sure you keep your men in check, sergeant. The next major he does that to might not be so kind.”
“Of course, sir,” mumbled Needs, offering up a half-hearted salute as the major turned away.
Beattie and Harris began sniggering in the corner of the section and, on the inside, I did too. None of us could quite believe that Etwell had actually got away with it.
“Right then you lot, come on. Let’s go find our new bit of frontline, shall we?”
5
The tension within the platoon had seemed to have calmed down considerably immediately after Etwell’s little outburst. Most of us simply went back to gathering up our things with a slight smile on our faces, hidden from the major as he skulked from the trench, quite pleased that Etwell had managed to have a go at one of the men who sent us into the fray.
We all found it rather amusing, that was, of course, apart from Etwell. He had his permanent scowl still etched across his face, as he lit up what must have been his fifth cigarette in as many minutes. He had always smoked heavily before, but as we settled in to our new line of defence, he was sucking in more drags of a ciggy, than he was oxygen.
The new section of trench was already vastly better than the one that we had been in previously. For starters, the walls hadn’t succumbed to an artillery shell, which meant they were still high and sandbagged.
A new fire step had been added at several points along our frontline, with some sandbags removed to create little peep holes that you could poke your head through to have a quick look around. Sergeant Needs had also produced a periscope, which meant that we were even safer while we kept watch for a German counter attack.
Needs sat quietly in the corner of the trench, slightly separated from the rest of us, but still keeping a fatherly eye on what was his command. He had his notebook out, for the third time that day, and was furiously scribbling in it to while away the hours. I wondered what he could have been writing in there, whether it was his evaluation over how each of us had done today, a diary of some sorts or maybe even a letter to his wife.
He seemed to be a deeply thoughtful man, with no real beliefs or superstitions, but you could tell that he imagined every action in his mind before he did them. That was what must have made him an incredibly effective soldier.
All of a sudden, there was a solitary crack, and had it not been for the day’s events, I would have simply thought that someone had just snapped a twig further down the line. But my now-accustomed mind didn’t take too long to work out what it really was. A gunshot.
Nothing followed it apart from an eerie kind of silence, as everyone up and down the line, seemed completely fixed in their positions. No one moved a muscle, not even to grab their rifles or sit upright from their sleeping positions.
It felt like the whole of the western front had frozen to the spot.
“What was that?” rasped Harris from somewhere in the darkness.
No one answered him for fear of what might happen to them if they spoke next. There was still a desperate void of noise, and I began to will someone, anyone to begin moving around so that we knew everything was okay.
Then we began to hear a rummaging sound, as clinking of kit and stumbling around began to take over.
Footsteps began to sound on the duckboards, at a steady leisurely pace, before cries of “Make way! Coming through!” erupted louder than an artillery shell ever could.
We all backed up onto the fire step, keeping the duckboards clear, as the first stretcher bearer slowly appeared from around the corner, splashing his way through the small puddle that had congregated there.
“Mind your backs!”
We all stared in a horrified silence as we watched the stretcher bearers manoeuvre their way around the trench, before I managed to get a good luck at the casualty who they were transporting.
He could not have been in my vision for much longer than three or four seconds, but what I laid my eyes upon, was just like it had been three or four hours.
The first thought that immediately passed through my mind was how lucky this young lad had been. I didn’t know his name o
r even recognise him, but I knew he must have been from the regiment owing to the shoulder titles that bore the initials “RB” of the Rifle Brigade.
Somehow, the lad was still alive, and I wondered for a moment if he even knew what was going on with him right now, or if he could see me as his eyes fixed on to mine as he was stretchered past.
The boy that was carried past had managed to get himself shot, straight in his face. His whole face was a mangled piece of flesh, the parts of him that weren’t, were instead drowning in his own blood. Even if I had known him, I doubt I would have been able to recognise him.
Just under his left eye, there was a large crater, about the size of a thrupenny bit, which was gushing blood faster than I could keep up with. I could make out the insides of his cheek, a vibrant pink in colour quite distinct and obvious from the scarlet crimson of his blood.
His cheek looked as though it had been torn apart, as easy as a damp piece of paper, and the skin began to flap and bob as he was tussled around on the canvas of the stretcher.
He didn’t scream or make any kind of sound, but made the flow of blood infinitely worse as he tried to open and close his mouth, as if he was some sort of fish struggling to breathe when out of water.
“Keep still, lad. Come on, stay still,” one of the stretcher bearers repeated, quite unsympathetically. I doubted that he was registering a single thing, but instead was in his own world of make-believe, where he was doing exactly what he wanted to do.
His eyes locked on to mine as he was dragged past, and, in that moment, I felt like I was watching my own corpse being taken away, after another miserable failing on my part, which had led to my own death.
I wondered if he would survive, or if the doctor’s only remedy would be to make him as comfortable as possible while he passed away. He had lost a lot of blood and before long, the pain would begin to set in, which would be excruciating.
As they disappeared around the corner of our trench, trying to find the temporary aid station that had been set up an hour or two before, Sergeant Needs began to shuffle around in his corner.
“Marksmen, lads. Be aware. Always be aware,” he spoke with a sincerity that we all appreciated, like he actually cared enough to not want to see his men ending up in the same way.
The young lad stayed with me for hours afterwards, while everyone else found it easy to simply wipe the boy from their memory, and go back to what they had been doing beforehand.
As if he had sensed that I wouldn’t have been able to erase the memory of the young soldier as quick as everyone else, Bob Sargent sidled up to me, offering me a cigarette.
“I give it one more day of this actually,” he said as I declined his offer. “You can’t keep on like this forever.”
I wondered how long forever would actually last, as I was growing increasingly more defeatist in my outlook, especially as I had just seen someone carted out in front of me, gaping wound in the side of his face. I doubted that the young lad who had just copped one to the face had imagined that that was how he was about to end up, as if he did, he wouldn’t have poked his head over the top.
“Forget about it, mate. It can happen to anyone. Just be thankful it wasn’t you.”
He paused as he leant his head down towards the match that was now hissing away at the end of his fingertips, before he flicked the stick away, letting it sizzle in the puddles underneath the wooden boards.
“So, why did you join up then?” he asked, chipperly.
I paused for a moment, to look at him. He flashed me a quick grin as he took the first initial puffs of smoke in, his green innocent eyes being shrouded in the mist caused by his exhalation of the smoke.
He was the same age as me, but I was confident that I had looked far more mature than he was and wondered if he had had to prove his age in any way when he had signed up. He was eighteen, but his face was so smooth and childlike, that he could have passed for anywhere around the fourteen mark. Coupled with his height, a good head and shoulders shorter than I was, and his skinny frame, it was possible to assume that this young soldier had only just left school to start working, never mind to go onto a battlefield.
“We’ve been through this before,” I said, slightly irritable that he wasn’t allowing me a few moments to wallow in the despair that I was currently harbouring at the bottom of my soul.
“I know,” he chimed, “but it makes me feel good to know that there’s someone else round here isn’t a professional.”
He stared at me expectantly, before I eventually rolled my eyes and gave in. “Alright, I was working in a bakery before here. My uncle’s place. He took me in, trained me up, then left me to it. When it seemed like a war was coming I realised how boring my life was, so joined up two or three weeks before the declaration.”
He seemed happy that I had humoured him for a moment, before he began to chunter on about why he had joined up, without me even having to prompt him.
“My father wanted me to join up. He has his own tailor firm you see, but wanted me to have a bit of discipline and life experience before I took over. Now, it just looks like I’m going to die here,” he scoffed, before falling into the pit of wallowing that I was already perched in.
Silently, he drew in drag after drag of his cigarette, before I decided it was my turn to drag him out of the hole.
“You have a girl?”
“Yeah,” he said, watching the smoke from his own cigarette twist upwards into the night time air. “Used to think that I might marry her actually.”
“You not going to now?”
“Nah,” he said, trying desperately to hold back on his tears, “I’d much rather be killed here with you lot anyway.”
He began to bounce his leg around nervously, as he tossed his cigarette up against the far side of the trench, almost angrily.
“Stupid war,” he muttered, hauling himself to his feet. “Anyway,” he sighed, slapping me on the shoulder, “don’t take anything that these lot say to heart. I know what it’s like to be where you are. They don’t mean any of it.”
“Anyone got any bumf?” Beattie declared, hopping down from the fire step and dancing around on his feet.
“Surely you don’t need to go again, Sam,” Harris sniggered.
“What? Thought I’d make the most of the German’s latrines while we’re here. Before our luck turns and we end up back yonder.”
“What luck?” sniggered Harris, before he pulled himself together to announce, “Think I saw some in that crate over there. I hope it stands up to the test.”
“Cheers mate,” he said slightly muffled, as he buried his head in the box, searching for the elusive toilet paper.
“How we looking with getting some extra rations, Sergeant?” queried Bob as Needs rounded the corner, staring into the pages of his trusty notebook.
“Not brilliant. But I’m hoping to get something in a little while, I’m due to see the Captain at zero three thirty. Hopefully I’ll get something from him. How’s everyone doing?”
“Good, Sergeant,” came most of the replies, as we continually cleaned rifles, awaiting the next piece of action or excitement. I was just looking forward to making it through the night, when it was more likely that we would be allowed to get our heads down for some rest.
“Ellis? You okay?” he prompted.
“Y-yes, sarge. Good thanks,” I lied. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to fool him, he was an experienced NCO, one that I was sure had dealt with the likes of me before. I respected him greatly, he was the one man that I had wanted to see when we had gone over the top, as I believed that he was the one that would be able to get me through this mess of a war.
“Good, good. Right then, there’s no point in you all staying up on watch after the day we’ve had. Etwell and Harris, take the first watch with me. The rest of you, put your skulls down somewhere, you have two hours.”
Not one of us needed to wait to be told again, within seconds, the gentle hums of exhausted soldiers snoring, was already
wafting its way up and down the trench.
6
As I slowly began to come around, the darkness of the sky, still shrouded in the smoke from the shell blasts almost twenty-four hours ago now, made it more troublesome for me to find the energy to open my eye lids.
I could hear someone moving about close by, as if whoever it was wanted to sit exactly where I was propped up sleeping. I had my cloth hat pulled down over my face, to help me sleep, but also keep my exposed skin as warm as possible.
Eventually, I gave in, despite the groans of my body, that still screamed at me about how tired I really was, and I opened my eyes. Flicking my cap back onto the top of my head, I realised that it was Sergeant Needs who now perched at my feet, and I wondered how long he had been looking at me.
“Hello, Sarge.”
“Good morning, Ellis.”
He continued to stare at me, as if he was waiting for me to start a conversation with him or do something that he had been expecting for a long while.
“Sorry Sarge, is it my turn on watch?”
He flicked his hand up in a way that told me not to worry, and as I caught sight of my wristwatch, I realised that it was four thirty in the morning. I still had half an hour to go before I was due up on the fire step. I could have had an extra bit of sleep.
Slightly annoyed with myself for waking up when I didn’t need to, I began to shuffle around to get comfy again.
“Want some?” Sergeant Needs growled in my direction, offering a hip flask out to me.
“What is it?”
“Don’t know. Some sort of French concoction, but it does the trick.”
I decided to take his word for it, immediately regretting it, as I slid some of the paraffin tasting liquid down my throat. I coughed and rasped for a second or two, before going back for a second swig. It had grown on me more or less immediately.
“I’ll put you in touch with the bloke who got it for me, if you like,” he said, chuckling, “he can get his hands on almost anything. His name’s Earnshaw. Funny little bloke really, but he offers a decent enough service.”
