by Thomas Wood
She spoke sympathetically, not entirely how I’d expected a twenty-two-year-old widow to react to this situation, especially at such a late hour as it now was.
I felt one edge of my mouth raise up slightly at the mention of him. I didn’t feel fearful of him here, he wasn’t an enemy figure charging towards me, he was my friend, my brother, the one who had kept an eye out for me all the time we had been together. I felt closer to him here.
The room was bare, except for a pre-made bed and a small table beside it, upon which a miniature lamp sat proudly. It seemed as if no one had used this room before, but it was kept in a constant state of readiness for anyone who might happen to drop in.
She pulled the blackout blind over the window, as she justified to me why she didn’t feel the need for a blind in here if the door was always shut. I wanted to reassure her that I wasn’t going to grass her up to the Civil Defence warden any time soon, if they had one round here. But nothing would come out of my mouth.
“Do you need pyjamas?” I didn’t like where this was going, the only pyjamas she would surely have in the house would be Charlie’s and I didn’t much like the thought of what he would have to say to me later on in my mind.
“I had to come,” the words shot out of my mouth, faster than a round was ejected from a machine gun. My mouth had gone dry, which was strange as I’d had plenty of tea and water to keep me going, it ached as I had to strain to make every syllable audible to her. Even then I wasn’t entirely sure she’d heard me, she just seemed to continue fiddling with the blind.
“I…I had to,” I felt the words pathetically fade away into the emptiness of the bedroom.
“He’s in my mind, Christine. He’s there all the time, I thought coming here might help me…and him.”
She remained silent as she shuffled around the room, making herself look a lot busier than she actually was. The room was immaculate but no matter how many times she brushed the bed with the palm of her hand, another lump would require her attention.
“No, thank you,” I found myself uttering, “I’ll sleep in my clothes, it… it usually helps.” I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but probably only achieved a weak flickering of my lips.
She left me to it. Before she shut the door completely, her head appeared through the crack, the faint ticking of the clock just about detectable from downstairs.
“I know you had to come, John. It’ll do you good,” and with that, she was gone.
18
6th June 1944
01.36 hours
Everything was in a complete silence now, the void of any noise dangled there limply, like a man who had just experienced the cruel snap of the hangman’s noose. The corporal had stopped running around and half-whispering, half-screaming at us. There was no more low-level chatter accompanied by the odd chuckle or swear word in retaliation. Everything was in complete silence.
Even the tank seemed to have fallen silent for now. The tank tracks squealed to a halt, before the idling engine seemed to shut down. There was nothing, no whistle of a summertime breeze, no fluttering of a disturbed bat, as if even Mother Nature was taunting us in the silence. Only the sound of my faltering breathing shattered the stillness.
Crouching down next to me, Charlie passed me a slimy, half-melted piece of my chocolate, which I accepted, dropping it on to my tongue before sliding it down my throat. I had always marvelled at chocolate, one of the simplest and yet most exotic of things that I had ever tasted. I dreamt of the far-flung land that the cocoa bean had come from, the hard work that had endured to turn it into the simple pleasure of sweet, glistening, half-melted chocolate.
He continued to fiddle with the wrapper for a moment, before folding it over the remaining pieces and popping it into his breast pocket.
I looked up from him as he tapped it and he gave me a wink.
“It’s lucky,” he mouthed.
He’d perked up. Not more than five minutes ago, I wouldn’t have put it past him to jump in front of the tank and scream at it to kill him. Now, he looked more fired up than ever, like he had something to fight for.
My eardrums were almost shattered as the tank’s engines fired up again, an oily, greasy smell filling the night sky as they did so. My nerves gave way as the revs increased as the pistons began to settle into their usual rhythm. I could feel them almost taunting me.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A voice sparked up, a German voice, I was sure of it. It was closely followed by a squeal of a hinge, presumably as the hatch on the tank was closed and locked. The squeal was simultaneously joined by the shriek of tank tracks.
They were back on the move. They were coming towards us.
They knew we were here, they must have known that we weren’t just going to leave the bridge to them. They can’t have been as stupid and lazy as we’d been made to believe.
But still, they continued to drive nonchalantly towards the bridge, as if they were on a sightseeing tour of quaint little French villages. It was a nice village, only a few houses here and there and the canals running through it, it must have been so tranquil during the day. I had seen there was a small café on this side of the bridge, a Bren gun team now occupying it. I thought that I should return one day, sit and have a coffee or something stronger, and marvel at the serene French countryside that surrounded me. But this was 2am in the morning. And they were in a Panzer IV tank. This was definitely not a sightseeing trip.
I braced myself as the trembling of the tank’s tracks began to reverberate on the ground around me, turning my legs into shivering wrecks. It was fortunate that I was lying, huddled into the wall of sandbags, rather than up on my feet or they certainly would have given way. I had lost all power in them. Like I had lost all control of everything.
I clamped my eyes shut tight and pursed my lips tighter still as I waited and prayed for the sound of a PIAT round piercing the tank and relieving us all of any duty.
But it wasn’t coming. The tank kept getting closer and closer to us. I opened my eyes, Charlie’s were wide with fear, like a deer who sees a man with a rifle staring straight at him. We knew it was coming, but the waiting was making the process of dying even worse.
The Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank gun was a detestable weapon, I had hated it every time that I had trained on it, and actively stayed away from it at every possible opportunity. But here I was, crouching behind a flimsy sandbag wall, praying to hear the odd fffwiipp that it made as the two-and-a-half-pound bomb was limply propelled from it.
The tank rolled closer still. It would be too late now, I could chance a look without being at risk of having my head blown off, the trajectory of the gun turret would mean it couldn’t aim so low.
I peeked over the top.
It was a formidable looking beast, and a well armoured one at that. It was well built, I could hardly make out any welding joints or rivets like I had been able to do on other ones that I had seen. It had a large sheet of steel that hung over the top half of the actual tracks, protecting them from any high explosives, for example, like that from a PIAT gun. Another indicator of how well prepared this army was compared to our own.
I was now fairly convinced that my fate had been sealed. There was no way a PIAT would be able to penetrate and destroy this tank. In fact, I may as well stand up and offer my capitulation right now.
I didn’t, instead I sat, staring at it, partly in fear but mainly in utter admiration of the thing. It stirred up a feeling of utter jealousy within me, what I would have done to have a beast like that on our side of the bridge. The envy that built up within me made tiny beads of sweat roll through the valleys and creases on my hands, as I pictured the smug face of the officer inside, watching, waiting, to give the execution order.
Its turret was facing dead ahead, aiming perfectly out and along the bridge, it had it all covered, it was ready to pounce.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I caught a flash of light just away to my left, and just as I flicked my head round to take a glim
pse at it, an intense heat, a burning sensation hit the right-hand side of my face, followed by a blinding flash.
I just caught the silhouette of a figure clutching onto a PIAT gun, it’s distinctive rocket shape projectile noticeably absent from its frame.
Suddenly, I was thrown into a deep darkness, as my eyes came round from the sudden shockwaves of light that I had just experienced. I was blind for a moment, but within a fraction of a second, my eyesight was more or less back to normal.
There were sudden, muffled shouts from within the tank, and it rocked back briefly as it spewed out a burning hot shell. The shell exploded somewhere just to my left and behind me, but I wasn’t able to see the explosion.
Instead, I felt myself being launched backwards, a sandbag clearly pinned to my chest. My arms flailed around helplessly as I desperately tried to find the solid safe haven of the ground.
I felt like a new born sparrow, attempting to take off for the first time, as if I had charged off the end of a branch, wings outstretched. The wind pummelled me as I failed to stay airborne, and I charged towards the earth.
The rush of wind was louder than any I’d ever heard before, louder than being in a glider. The air was thick, and I felt myself pushing through it forcefully, as I rapidly lost altitude.
I clattered to the floor, my right arm painfully stretched up behind my back. I gasped as I fought dramatically to re-inflate my bankrupt lungs, as if a heavy weight champion had delivered one of his finest blows to my stomach.
My helmet went flying off to my left and I watched emotionally as it rolled around before becoming inanimate. The only piece of real protective equipment we had been issued now lay some way from me. I felt vulnerable, naked.
I continued in my struggle to breathe as I felt a crushing weight on my chest and it took me a few moments to realise that the sandbag had stayed with me, still strapped to my chest, like a baby clinging to its mother.
After a quick tussle, I managed to shift it from me and my head drooped back while I struggled for oxygen. My eyes flicked momentarily as they rolled around in my skull. I fought the urge to let them sink round and look back towards my own brain.
I coughed, spluttered and spat as I tried to rid myself of the unmistakeable, metallic twinge of blood that I found myself drowning in.
I turned my head to one side as I vomited a vibrant cocktail of blood and bile, the odd fusion of black, red and green, noticeable on my shoulder. My front teeth were now absent, and I hissed rather than breathed as my tongue obstructed my desperate panting.
The heat was intense, as if I had opened up the hatch to an immense furnace, and I struggled to keep my eyes open as I forced my head up off the floor, to take a look at the burning wreckage in front of me.
Burning silhouettes lay rolling around just a few feet from me, crying out in an undeterminable language for mercy. My eyes widened as I listened to their screams, to their cries for help.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I focussed in on one man as I could make out a chuckle. He began laughing almost uncontrollably, his hysterical screeching quickly turning to tears. His cries and screams were only interrupted by his necessity to briefly draw breath.
He soon began screaming, screaming so violently I could feel his vocal chords being shredded, and his howls sounded like a wounded animal that was being destroyed from the inside. His beast-like howling was the kind that the human mind cannot ignore, cannot forget.
Despite all this, I could make out a few sobs, sobs that turned into decipherable pleas.
“Chrissy…Christine…”
I could just make it out between the sobs, soon they turned to a futile effort to suck in air despite his restricted breathing.
I watched as the cacophony of intense oranges burned away in front of me, but then suddenly, everything turned to black.
19
August 1944
I was sobbing again. Uncontrollably. It wasn’t a dream that I’d experienced before, but I felt like I knew exactly what was going to happen next. It was a dream that had once been a reality. I had been there. I had felt and seen everything I experienced. I had remembered. I knew what came next.
I would be dragged backwards, away from the burning wreckage of the tank, its vibrant oranges lighting up the surrounding area as if a great searchlight had been focussed on it. I would witness the true callousness of the human heart as men, and bits of men, flashed past my eyes. Charlie would be dragged in to the pit alongside me a few moments later, before giving in to the intense burns that he had experienced.
The kitchen table lay on its side, the table top facing away from me and towards the door. I sat on its underside, its legs surrounding me in a wooden bear hug. I screwed my face up and grimaced as I pushed my hands through my hair. I had felt good before, why had this new one popped up in my mind, worse than all the others?
Would they just continue on this trend for the rest of my life? I knew that if I kept seeing Charlie like that night after night, then my life wouldn’t go on for much longer anyway.
“John,” she said eventually, “it’s alright John.” Her tone was affectionate and compassionate, but I could tell that she was disturbed by the fact a near-stranger, who had invited himself into her home before screaming and crying through the night, was now a sobbing mess on the kitchen floor.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I leapt over the table top and pressed my body hard into its surface as the rat tat tat of machine gun fire reverberated off the walls of the kitchen. Screaming at Christine to move I lurched out for her, dragging her into cover to wait for the racket to stop.
The Pole. Len’s skull. Charlie’s pleading.
She screamed as I slammed her head into the surface of the table.
The whistle of incoming mortar rounds tormented my mind, my body tensing up as I waited for the inevitable impact of the blast.
“John!” she yelled at the top of her voice, “John! Stop it now!”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I kept her head pressed up hard against the table, my head resting on top of hers and I began breathing in individual strands of hair as my lungs began to function more normally.
My head felt as if it was splintering as I crushed my head against hers. Suddenly, I was watching from the side-lines. I watched as a man crouched down next to a dying soldier, I watched as he stared at a murdered comrade. I watched as he lay next to his pleading friend. I had no control. I could do nothing.
I watched as a sobbing wreck kept the head of a stranger pushed firmly down into a table, his own head on top of hers, both of them wincing in pain. Hers, physical, his, mental.
“John…” she managed to sneak out in between pathetic weeps and gulps for air, “it’s just the kettle, John.”
I rested for a moment, taking in my surroundings, taking in what she was saying to me. No sobs came from me this time, but silent tears began to splash loudly on the stone floor.
The kettle continued to squeal and rattle as it hopped from one side to the next, hollering at the nearest pair of hands to take it off the heat. It would be a few moments more before it was, a small saucer of black now situated on the bottom of it.
She sniffed as she clambered to her feet and began scuffling around again.
I rose from my position and helped her up as gently as possible, before righting the table and replacing the fallen objects. Shattered fragments of china chimed gently as my bare feet danced on it, several shards penetrating the surface of my skin, leaving small droplets dripping over the stone floor.
I blinked furiously, each one lasting longer than the other as the burning sensation threatened to shut my eyes down for good.
“I’m sorry,” I felt pathetic uttering the most futile and grovelling apology as she set about making a cup of tea. Slow, enormous waves of regret began breaking around me, and I felt as though I was lying in the surf, letting each one slowly drown me. I longed for my previous life, to take a step backwards and take a different path. What if I hadn’
t volunteered for gliders, would I have had a better life? Would I be normal? Would I be alive?
She scurried around almost unfazed by what had happened, as I poured out my soul to her about what had gone on. The run up to the operation, the Pole in the house, Len, Charlie and every minute detail in between. I ranted on for hours before I finally got to the end.
“….and I thought, that coming here, I might be able to say goodbye to him properly.”
She left a long pause, letting me take large, sobering gulps of air as I fought against the giddiness that came down on me. I felt calmer, the haze in my mind momentarily lifted, even if the pain, hadn’t yet subsided.
“He called for me?”
It wasn’t the reaction that I had been expecting at all. I struggled to look at her in the eye as I thought about Charlie. I imagined the intense pain that he must have been in, the sores that had begun to form on his body almost instantly.
I tried with all my might to nod for her, but I couldn’t, the weight of my tears seemed to be stopping me. She turned her back to me for a moment and took in more than her own fair share of the oxygen.
The PIAT had penetrated the thick armour of the tank, it had done its job. But it must have hit the ammo supply inside the tank, causing an intense ball of fire and destruction, that somehow flung me backwards but engulfed Charlie.
The guilt of being alive swallowed me up once more. I had nothing to live for, I had done nothing in my life worth mentioning. I had no one to live for, but I had lived. I had lived and, yet I was wishing myself dead every minute of my waking hours.
He had called for his wife, he wanted so desperately to have her by his side, in his moment of need. He wanted to see her one, last time. I couldn’t imagine how he possibly felt, I had no tangible emotions to him. I was selfish, the only person I had been thinking about was me; what was happening to me and why.
I couldn’t bear the thought of thinking of someone else while I was dying, I wanted to be able to focus on myself and getting home. Maybe I was enduring this hell to teach myself something, like death was waiting for me to finally put someone else first.
