by Thomas Wood
My senses seemed to sharpen with every snap of a gun, able to take in new information quicker than a machine gun can spit out its deadly cargo. Something whizzed past my cheek, like a bee who flies a little too close to you, just able to feel the tickle of his furry back. I thought about the bullet as it continued on its journey, wondering whether some other poor man would feel it plunge itself into his flesh.
That one didn’t have my name on it. None of them seemed to. According to the Colonel, it wasn’t the one with my name on it that I had to worry about, but the one with ‘To Whom it may Concern’ scratched into it that should really get me quaking.
The eruption of noise all around me didn’t seem real, there was less sound on the rifle range when twenty men all fired weapons at once. This was more than twenty men this time, way more.
A pressure wave suddenly assaulted my ears, like they had been cupped and a fist had slammed into the side of it. My right ear popped again, and a high-pitched squeal rang out for a moment or two, before subsiding. I knew immediately what it was. Grenade. I didn’t know who had thrown it, or if it had even been a friend or foe. All I knew was that the grenade had one purpose. To kill. It would shatter into a thousand pieces, lethal darts of metal flying in every direction, trying to maim if the initial blast had not got you first.
I had seen first-hand what it could do to a man. One recruit, had shards of molten metal embedded into his legs within the first few weeks of training because he was on the wrong end of a grenade, no one had seen the poor man after that, apparently being consigned to a desk job, for the sake of the training teams, for the duration of the war.
My heart was racing, I waited for the moment where I would lose my footing, the bridge collapsing all around me, sending me into the freezing midnight waters below, and that was if I wasn’t instantly killed by the blast.
The blast never came, but the pinging of rounds as they ricocheted off the bridge intensified as I pounded my way over the river.
I raised my weapon as I surged forwards and discharged a magazine into the oncoming flashes in front of me; at least now if I was to go down, it was as a hero and not, as was feared by so many, a coward. I hurtled forwards so fast it crossed my mind that I might even run into one of my own rounds if I was not careful. My pace slowed as I changed mags, but my gaze was never diverted from what lay directly ahead of me. I knew exactly where everything was, I’d trained and retrained to the point where I could storm this bridge with my eyes shut.
The Sten bucked and kicked as it wrestled to break free from my clammy grip, the heat from the discarded rounds almost searing my skin as they jumped from the weapon. It was unlikely that any of these rounds was going to shorten the war too dramatically, the likelihood of them even hitting a target so small, in fact, that it was probably better to save my rounds, but, it felt good, like I was making some sort of difference.
I knew there would be a few buildings when we got to the other side that we would need to clear, a few reinforced trenches with a couple of machine guns and hopefully only a handful of men to deal with. But that wasn’t my priority right now. My priority was to get off this bridge as soon as possible, then find some cover and hopefully, I wouldn’t be the only man to make it across.
I slotted the magazine in neatly, pulled the cocking handle and picked up my pace. I was only a few strides away from the end of the bridge now. A few men were in front of me, pulsing forward just as fast and as enthusiastic as me. I watched as a round entered a man’s chest, stopping him dead in his tracks and catapulting him backwards. I carried on past him just as he began screaming out in agony and clutching at the void that now occupied his chest.
Three men huddled over a figure on my left and as I sped past I caught a glimpse of metallic blood, pooling itself on the chilled steel. The scarlet liquid that had not so long ago occupied its owner’s veins, was now spilling out of him quicker than if a canteen of water had been upended. I didn’t need to stop; the others were doing their job.
I heard each, individual echo of my rounds, above everything else, as they hit the buildings around me. Another empty magazine now occupying my gun, I slammed myself up against the wall of the nearest building so hard that I felt the wall wobble slightly. I took a few moments to catch my breath and wiped away the saliva that congealed around my chin. I wheezed as my lungs tried desperately to draw in oxygen, a sharp pain emanating from my chest with every inhalation.
I placed my hands on my knees and dropped my weapon to the floor gently.
“You’re as useful as a dead man while that weapon is on the floor,” a voice grunted in my direction as he joined me at the wall.
He handed it to me as we were joined by some other muddy faces, all panting and wheezing just like me, fighting each other for the shared air around us.
“This is all rather exciting isn’t it chaps,” I couldn’t quite work out the face, he had no features like the rest of us, but his voice gave him away. Lieutenant Maxwell was a likeable officer, but he was one who had the innate ability to get on one’s nerves. This was one of those moments, we all ignored him.
A string of curse words echoed around us, and I prepared to see a bloodied body being dragged towards us, needing my medical attention. He avoided clattering into the wall as the rest of us had done, stopping short. Hopping up and down in anticipation, he undid his trousers and let them drop to the ground. He laughed nervously as he relieved himself up the side of the wall, great pillars of steam and a strong stench evaporating around us.
The noise of utter relief seemed to resound louder than the clamour of machine guns had ever done.
“Who needs a radio when you can rely on Jimmy and his smoke signals?” The others all chortled in unison as Jimmy finished up.
“I’ve been holding that in since we left Tarrant,” he apologised, pulling his trousers up, embarrassed, “the Lieutenant wouldn’t let me go out the door. Something about giving our mission away!”
“I was more concerned that it would turn into an unsanctioned bombing run, if you get my drift lads!” came the mocking reply from the Lieutenant.
I was relieved for Jimmy, but it was a relief that we all needed before we started the next phase of the operation.
A calmness began to descend on the area. A few shouts went up every now and then as the injured were pulled back. A grenade or two went off as machine gun nests were destroyed. This was the kind of silence that I was used to, and in fact, preferred. I let my mind wander for a moment or two, allowing myself a brief respite to the world I found myself in.
All of a sudden, what seemed like a demented and ecstatic town crier began screaming and shouting as he charged up and down the street. As he did so he was met with whoops and cheers.
“Ham and Jam! Ham and lovely, wonderful, British, Jam!”
He was cut short by the eruption of gunfire.
6
20th November 1917
05.30 hours
The Mark IV Tank. That was my fortress. My heavy-handed beast. The Ugly Duckling.
The cartoon of a small duckling with great buck teeth and cross eyes was a comical sight to see sprawled out across the side of a quarter inch thick, khaki coloured armour plating. It was even more comical when bullets started ricocheting off his teeth and large projectiles erupted from its guns. The colours had faded in the poor weather, but the basic outline of our lucky mascot was still intact, framed by a spattering of bullet holes and dents.
It lurched around like a bull as we drove, making every attempt to throw you off its back but at the same time charging forwards like an Olympic sprinter. It was slower and much more cumbersome than a sprinter, but it did its job. We were just her passengers.
There were eight of us in our original crew. Ten if you include the two six-pound guns hanging out of the sides, ready to spray death and destruction on all those that blocked it.
That’s if we ever got close enough to the frontline. The interior of our tank reached melting point so frequently t
hat we often felt as though we would pass out, the exhaust pipes sat just inches away from all of us and glowed a vibrant red as we maxed out the engine, pushing it further and further each time.
The fumes were encompassing, no real separation between us and the dirty air that intoxicated the inside of the tank, no mask could ever protect us from that. It was one of the reasons I had bought my pipe, I figured that adding slightly to the fumes while at the same time gracing myself with a nicer aroma was worthwhile, a sentiment which wasn’t exactly shared with the rest of my crew.
But the fumes from my pipe and that of our beloved tank, really were the least of our worries. The engine was prone to giving out at any moment, with no hint of its desperation or unwillingness to continue. The grinding and chugging of the engine, as it dragged us forward, would just stop. We would all stare at each other in a brief moment of unbelief and quite often, relief. It meant we wouldn’t be going into battle today.
It was also cramped and uncomfortable, to the point where I kept my helmet on at all times after giving myself a lump on the side of my head during my initial experiences in her, something that I never fully got used to. You could smack the side of your fist against any part of her structure and you wouldn’t hear the clang that you might expect from steel, just a solid, dependable, thud.
We had to rub our bodies up against each other in order to squeeze past one another, but we devised a very nifty loading up routine to minimise the bodily contact, something that we, as a crew, were incredibly proud of.
I was in love though, we all were, and, like any obliging man in a relationship, the issues and problems that she gave us, were overlooked. We loved her, our Doris, so did the troops that we saw all around us, waving us on as we took the fight to the enemy. They had an unwavering faith in her, in us, to protect them, to give the enemy a nasty surprise when they saw a steel monster slowly trundling its way towards them.
1917 had been my last battle, the last one on the Western Front anyway, the last time that Doris would take me towards my objective, alongside almost four hundred other ugly beasts. Four hundred other tanks and yet it would be the loneliest that I had ever felt. The most vulnerable.
I couldn’t pinpoint an exact reason for why I felt so lonely, I just always seemed to be before an advance. It seemed odd, to feel lonely, in a small, steel container with seven other men, all tightly packed in together. Thousands of men outside the steel box sat in their dugouts, willing us on, cheering us on. All these men on my side and yet, on the inside, I felt completely void of any company. It didn’t seem like it was the best place for your head to be before a battle.
I often found myself thinking about Rorke’s Drift, where the men had been outnumbered by almost twenty to one and questioned whether they had felt as lonely as I did, before debating with myself as to whether I had the right to feel lonely compared to them. Then I reminded myself that my enemy, had machine guns and artillery, not antique rifles and assegai spears.
We all sat in the tank and waited; waited for the seconds to tick round and signal the advance. No one spoke, that was the most haunting thing, all we seemed capable of doing was staring. The noises of the outside world were shut off by the quarter inch thick armour, a mere rumble of the life we knew, just the other side of the steel. A few coughs every now and then, and a mumbled prayer from Don, one of the gear men. He spoke with a lisp, something that always seemed rather cruel seeing as his surname was Somersville, which is why he was insistent on his first name only being used, a request which the Lieutenant, couldn’t quite get his head around. Don was from Northern Ireland, which made my understanding of what he said, even worse, but what I did know, is that before this particular advance, he had lost his picture of his girlfriend, something which made his already short fuse, even shorter. We knew absolutely nothing about her, he had a picture of her, but none of us had ever seen it. It was odd, all of us had shared everything about our lives, you had to, even Lieutenant Harper had delved into his background. Don however, kept himself to himself.
I stared at the great levers that leapt from the floor, the levers that, pushed in the right direction, would drive us to our deaths. We waited and waited before we heard the rumble of the other engines firing up.
Ours was fired up too, and as it was, I yanked a piece of cloth over my mouth, shamefully stolen from a dead man’s battle shirt. I had taken it from him after my first piece of action in Doris, the fumes had made me so giddy that I had been on the verge of asking someone else to take over as I couldn’t see straight. I wrapped it around my lower face and neck and tied it in front of my mouth, giving a futile bit of protection from the deathly fumes. The fumes she gave off would catch you on the back of your throat, leading to a few hours of great, whooping coughs and a monumental sore throat. Some of the lads who had operated on tanks for a while longer than us, were even known to have coughed up specks of blood.
With a swift jerk of the lever, we lurched off, the tracks squeaking as they began to warm themselves up, tirelessly wrapping their way around us, propelling us forward.
We drove in silence for twenty minutes, maybe more, before Lieutenant Harper, a young, but already experienced officer told us we were coming up to No Man’s Land. He slammed his peep hole shut, opting instead for the miniscule periscope that courageously poked its way out from the front of the tank. Not wishing to have a lot of machine gun rounds embedded firmly into my face, I snapped mine shut too.
Suddenly, I felt a lack of resistance in the controls and it felt as if we had got airborne for a moment as we trickled over the British trench, a deathly silence was pierced only by the low rumblings and squeaks of the tanks.
I thought about the chaps below us dejectedly for a moment or two. I could feel them all, helmets all ducked down low below the parapet as we trundled over, not knowing what was before them. Some would be praying no doubt, others thinking of home and loved ones, while others still would be hoping optimistically of returning home again to their old lives. Soon though, and I’m sure most of them realised it, their lives would be cut short by the brutal reality of No Man’s Land, as rounds from every side and direction would cut them down one by one.
We’d seen it all multiple times before, it would be the same this time and the same again next time. I was slowly becoming accustomed to watching men’s limbs being ripped off their body by the round of a maschinengewehr.
I wondered about how much of the war they had seen so far. Some had been lucky, or unlucky, and made it through almost three years of war, I wasn’t naïve though, I knew for certain that for a lot of these boys, it would be the first, and the last time, that they ventured out into No Man’s Land. Without a doubt, a small part of every man in the offensive would die today.
Within a matter of seconds, the trenches were behind us and, so too were the thought of the thousands of khaki uniforms all crouching below the parapet. It was just Doris and her crew now. The other tanks all faded to the periphery of my mind. We were all that mattered now. I would only worry about the rounds being directed towards us from here on in.
It didn’t take long for the sounds of guns opening fire to permeate through the thick steel. At first, they seemed far away, far too distant to worry about, more pot shots than directed rounds, being acutely aware though, that even the vaguest shot could get lucky, I kept my wits about me.
We rose and fell as if we were in the Navy, riding the waves as we steamed across the ocean and I felt a sudden affinity to my brother. He had been in the Navy and saw action at Jutland, where he had lost his life. We didn’t know much about the way Harry had died, just that, he had. I couldn’t help but imagine the way that he had come to the end of his life. Had he died in agony as his burning ship began to sink? Had he died instantly from the explosion of a torpedo? Or had he drowned in peace and tranquillity?
It led to the natural progression of how I was to die, for I surely was, and whether or not my family would ever find out the truth about my demise.
I pulled myself away from that image as we jolted into the bottom of a water-filled shell hole. I wondered if there was anything living in this one, rats, lice, German soldiers, Brit—
The artillery round exploded to our left, sending a vibration up my body, through the controls. I fought with Doris for a moment as we were sent up onto our right track, just as all the other guns opened up on the Western Front, all of them pinging fiery rounds towards us.
We recoiled slightly as one of our six pounders ejected its cargo, quickly followed by the other gun to my right. The rhythmic thumping of our guns, mixed with the sound of our fellow tanks, became almost therapeutic. I always felt more at ease when we could return fire, it gave me the false hope that it meant the enemy had their head down, more concerned with preserving their own life than taking mine. In reality, I knew, that our six-pound rounds were probably flying high over the frontline trench and smashing into an unoccupied reserve trench or connecting line. Either way, it made me feel better, it helped me to keep the tank going forward, and not throwing Doris around and heading for home.
As we trundled across No Man’s Land, I found myself chuckling at the strange irony of giving a male tank a woman’s name. It comforted us all to have a female name to take to war, almost as if our mothers had come to join in with us.
Lighter rounds began pinging off the side of our beast, as if pebbles were being dropped violently into a pan. The tinging intensified to a crescendo as we drew more attention than if we’d parked Doris in Trafalgar Square. Lieutenant Harper, sat right next to me, was barely audible as he barked for the machine gunners to open up. I couldn’t tell if they’d heard him, they were firing anyway. He forgot we had been here before.
Sweat poured down from my brow and was soaked up into the fabric of my pathetic mask. It had begun to taste salty and oily and I had to regularly spit into it to stop myself from swallowing the fumey cocktail. I tore it from my face as it began to irritate my skin and let it dangle around my neck. I could feel great lumps and blotches on the surface of my face, and I just knew they would be a glowing red colour, they always were. It’s how I got the nickname ‘Wilhelm’ from the rest of my crew, thanks to a chilling resemblance to the Kaiser in several comedic drawings of the man in many newspapers. But the discomfort of not being able to breathe properly and the inevitable ridicule would be the price I’d pay.
