by Thomas Wood
His grunts brought me back to reality and as another round whined as it zipped past my ear, I felt like giving up. Ahead of me, I watched the three figures as they catapulted themselves over a fallen tree. The base of the tree had been torn away from the trunk, it lay splintered and sorrowful just to the left of my boys. It had been forcibly ripped from where it had grown for hundreds of years, probably by a mortar round, or artillery shell.
“C’mon!” I grunted, directed more at my own mind, rather than my passenger. He began to whimper, a pathetic, childlike whimpering, like the kind a naughty dog would make when caught in the act of stealing.
“Shut your mouth! Keep going!” I surprised myself with my own words, I always considered myself to be mild mannered and considerate, but here I was possessed.
“Sarge! Please! I won’t make it…drop me!” I ignored his pleas, he would make it, it was only a minor wound, he could still walk on it if it really came to it.
“Shut up, Harfield! That tree, there, we’re nearly there!”
We couldn’t have been more than fifty or sixty yards away from the tree now. A brief respite. I knew it wouldn’t be good enough, we must have had an entire German company chasing us through these woods, but it would give me time to think, to mount up a few casualties on their side, and, more importantly, let me get my breath back.
Suddenly Harfield’s chest seemed to explode, and the heavy weight on my shoulder abruptly got heavier, forcing me to the ground. His face hit the deck with such a force that a pile of dried leaves seemed to flick up and a small dust cloud rose up. I had sunk to my knees with the force but knew there was no point in checking for Harfield’s pulse or vital signs. Even if he was alive, I wouldn’t have time to pick him up again and charge for cover, they were catching up with us, and I wouldn’t appreciate going home riddled with holes and covered in blood. If they would even send me home to my wife in that state anyway.
I pushed myself up and, rifle down by my side, puffed my cheeks out violently as I began surging towards the tree. My boys behind the tree began poking their heads up, I could just make out the round, khaki steel of their helmets as they did so. In a way, I was grateful that they weren’t firing yet, as I began dancing left and right, zigzagging and darting as unpredictably as possible. I hoped that it would make it harder to hit me, and as I flicked behind one tree, I heard a sobering, solid thump as a round hammered into the bark.
Harfield was dead. That was another good bloke that I had lost, I was now up to fourteen in the space of twenty-four hours. I thought it was fourteen, it could easily have been more, they were the only ones that I’d actually seen killed with my own eyes. I’d probably lost a lot more than that now, most of them had gone their separate ways and so I had no way of protecting them at all.
I made it to the log, just as the barrels of three Lee-Enfield rifles reluctantly rested themselves on the top of the trunk. I threw myself head first over the log, diving into a pool of dried leaves and twigs. Spitting some of them out of my mouth I tried my best to gather my thoughts, to calm myself in amongst the utter chaos that seemed to be getting the better of us.
“We’re lost! We’re completely lost! Admit it, we’re never getting home, are we?!” Vidler was one of the least liked blokes in the company. He had been a petty thief in civvie street, who had chosen military life instead of six months inside. It just so happened that his time in the army had seemingly coincided with a massive German advance through France and Belgium. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.
He routinely skipped duties and on more than one occasion had been arrested by the military police for multiple bar fights and being too physical in the local ‘houses of interest’. He was foul mouthed and had a lack of respect for everybody else in his company, something that was reciprocated from all the other boys.
“I’ve got everything to live for! This is so unfair, I don’t want to be here! Why are we protecting the French anyway?! It’s their problem, let them deal with it!” His rant continued, and he began to flap, every sentence becoming more hysterical than the last.
“Why didn’t we just leave him?! He slowed us down so much, we’d be at the coast if it wasn’t for Harfield!” His voice was dangerously loud, the Germans already knew exactly where we were, but I didn’t want to advertise it any more than was strictly necessary.
It was also having a bad effect on us, because I knew he was right. We all did. It would have been more sensible to leave him when we got into trouble, to prop him up against a tree and hope that a kindly German medic would patch him up. But it wasn’t the right thing to do, and I couldn’t help but do the right thing, it was something I was susceptible to.
“You’ve done this to us, Baker, you!” He more or less spat his words at me, the utter contempt in his voice was on a level that I had never heard before.
Corporal Carter shuffled his way over to Vidler, creating a wash of leaves behind him as he scraped along. Delivering the finest punch square on Vidler’s nose, he hissed at him, “It’s Sergeant Baker, Vidler. And the only reason we’re still ‘ere is because of ‘im.”
I smirked at him, something that he took as a sign of thanks, and he shuffled back to his position, picking up his rifle on the way.
Vidler sobbed quietly as he mopped up the blood on the sleeve of his wool jacket. It had already begun to drip down and form up on the collar of his jacket as he spat out a mouthful of blood-stained saliva onto the ground.
“You pull yourself together,” I said, not looking at him, “and make sure you do it quick.”
A subdued “Sarge…” uttered from his lips, half-heartedly, but it didn’t matter, all I needed was to make sure that he would fire his weapon at the right time, and at the right people.
As I looked out across the wood, all seemed totally quiet for a moment. There was no more shouting, no more bullets zipping over our heads, even the faint booming of artillery had seemed to fall silent, all for us.
2
The silence that enshrouded the forest continued for a moment longer, until it was broken by a harsh whisper.
“There,” it was accompanied by a long finger, attached to a skinny, young figure. I had found Private Arthur Knight trembling at the side of a road after yet another dive bomb attack. He was sobbing uncontrollably, his hands clamped tightly over his ears with his eyes showing no signs of opening. He had continued to be hysterical, uttering words over and over again, but in no particular order or structure.
His sobbing had intensified to a point where he was almost drowning in his own tears, at which point I grabbed hold of his webbing, and hauled him to his feet. I didn’t know what was going through this boy’s head, but plenty of others were experiencing the same situation, and coping a lot better. I dealt with him the only way that I knew how to deal with hysterical soldiers, I gave him a slap.
He had pulled himself together after that, he had managed to keep his head in all the situations that we had faced together since then. He was a good soldier, a cold killer if he needed to be, but he was also one of the most sensitive soldiers that I had come across. At every interval and interlude that we had been granted, he had spoken about his mother and how desperately he wanted to return to her. He had joined the army at the age of seventeen, shortly after his dad had died, so that he could provide for his mother and younger sister. He was proud of his motives and wasn’t afraid to tell people his real reason why he was at war.
Despite the professional display that he put on as a soldier, he was vulnerable, I could see that. He was too young to be in a world like this, not just physically, but emotionally. It was troubling him, I could see it in his eyes. When I had first picked him up out of that ditch, his eyes were scared, woeful, but now, they had seen a change.
A man’s eyes are a giveaway to his soul, and for Private Knight, they were showing a pit of despair. They darted around manically, as if he was looking for his next hiding place, something that he no doubt had got used to over the last few days of r
etreat. His eyebrows wiggled slightly as he did so and he bit at his bottom lip, so much so that the skin was now almost non-existent. His face had narrowed slightly as he pointed, his brow had joined together as one, a great valley running down the middle of it vertically, to separate them from each other.
I couldn’t quite make out how he felt exactly. Excited? Sad? There wasn’t much time to think about it too deeply.
He cocked his rifle slowly and deliberately, with his gaze fixed on whatever lay in front of him. Following the general direction of where his finger had pointed, I changed the focus of my own eyes. I could hardly make them out at first and, to begin with, they merely looked like trees themselves, gently sauntering around in the breeze.
Quite quickly, the faded tree trunks turned to men, their grey uniforms moulding almost perfectly with the greyscale landscape. I raised my rifle and swung it over the top of the trunk, slowly.
“Steady boys, wait a moment,” I breathed. I could make out about six individual figures so far, but I knew there would be more lurking in the undergrowth. There had been at least fifty of them on our tail a moment ago, but something had slowed them down, which gave us the chance to catch our breath. I fiddled around with my webbing for a moment, trying to locate the ammo pouches by touch alone. I found them, and reaching in, estimated that I had three charger clips in there. Added to the five rounds I currently had in the rifle, that took me up to twenty rounds of ammunition left. I guessed that the others most likely had a similar number of rounds remaining.
Twenty rounds, enough to kill potentially twenty men. I thought about that for a moment. If all of us managed to take twenty, that would mean we were able to take out a whole company. For a moment, I felt buoyant, optimistic almost.
The thing is with a mortar round you, more often than not, feel it before you can hear it, or see the effects of it. The pressure wave that engulfed my ears made them explode with pain, not a normal earache or ear-popping, but a deep, penetrating pain, like someone had taken a needle and burrowed it straight down the canal, like they were trying to touch my brain.
As one body, we dragged our rifles from the top of the log and tucked them into our stomachs as we curled up in a ball, seeking solace in the lump of wood. We cradled our weapons as if they were our own children, like we were protecting them, rather than the other way around.
Branches cracked and snapped above our heads as mortar projectiles forced themselves through the canopy of the forest. Twigs and branches began smashing their way down into the ground as they were forcibly separated from their owners.
As I watched bits of those trees plummeting to the earth, I could not suppress the feeling of utter dismay at their demise. Trees had always been a fascination of mine, ever since childhood, my mind amazed at the way in which they stood so firm and sturdy, with little being able to rip them from their earthly foundations. The way that branches seemed to throw themselves all over the place, in a wild dance, when a breeze slipped its way around them, and how some of the arms of the tree, defied gravity by growing upwards, seemingly pointing to the sky. So much so, I would spend hours following the direction of their pointing, staring at the blue sky above, or the rolling darkness of clouds as their thunderous presence became known.
Another volley of rounds threw up large chunks of earth, before they scattered themselves, in a very fine dust, all around us. Each of us got an equal covering of the dust, and I even got another taste of the French countryside. I tried to spit out the grains of dirt and dust that had now settled themselves in my mouth, but I couldn’t. I’d had no water in a very long time, my mouth was completely arid, not a drop had touched it in days. I couldn’t spit, I couldn’t swallow, I had no other alternative but to let the dust sit in my mouth, and wait for it to disappear of its own accord.
My whole world seemed to shake as another round pummelled its way into the ground, the tinkling of falling debris on our helmets taking a lot longer than normal to subside. I looked across at the others. Carter, my corporal, was calm, he knew exactly how to react in every situation. He was older than a lot more of the other company NCOs, but that definitely didn’t mean he wasn’t capable. He was a brilliant organiser of men; tell him where they needed to be and at what time, and they’d be there, no matter what. He was also an excellent disciplinarian, admittedly he didn’t always strike his men like he had done with Vidler, but the vast majority of them came to respect him so much for his attitude and outlook, that they daren’t cross the line with him.
Vidler had his chin tucked so far into his chest that I wasn’t sure he would be able to look back up again, his neck seized in the position he had forced himself into. I could just about see his hands, engulfed in his stomach, shaking. He was a wreck.
I couldn’t stand him, I thought he was insubordinate, selfish and downright pathetic, but that didn’t mean I would let him die. It was my job, as Sergeant, to keep my men alive, to help them to get back home to their loved ones and, if they needed to, to fight another day.
Another layer of dust began to throw itself all around us and I caught little Knight’s eye as he began twisting and contorting his body out of his safety position. He pivoted his body round and slowly poked his head up, his eyes still scanning, darting all over the place looking for his next hiding place.
My mind was screaming at me to shout at him to get his head back down, to yank at his webbing and drag him into cover if I needed to. But my body wasn’t playing ball. I was stuck where I was. I stared at my feet in utter disbelief of myself, I was meant to be leading these men, to be the one they turned to, but now I was frozen.
What was it? Fear? Cowardice?
Again, I felt the mortar before I heard or saw it. It sent such a pulsating, vibrating feeling through the core of my body that I felt like I was going to vomit. The dust began to settle all around me, and as I lifted my head up, the browned, monotone, drying leaves, were now stained with a liquid, a scarlet liquid.
Knight was lying on the floor, clutching at his neck, his hands covering this wound, but a large shard of wood was protruding from his cheek. He groaned and shouted in agony while he tried desperately to speak, but the giant splinter had shot through his cheek, and pinned itself to his tongue.
I splashed around in the pool of blood as I fought with him to get to the wound, to treat him, but he just wouldn’t let me. I begged him with my eyes more than anything, just to let me do what I could for him, but he didn’t understand. That’s the problem with a dying man, they become irrational, they don’t understand the simplest of instructions, and, right now, that was Arthur’s problem.
“Here they come,” whispered Carter, as Knight began to gargle, great bubbles of blood began forming at the back of his throat.
“It’s all yours, Sid,” I hissed back at him. That was all we needed now.
The Germans had begun closing in.
3
“We’re alright boys…we’re okay, watch your fire…make ‘em count,” Sid was brilliant at his job. He may have been hated by some, but by the vast majority, he was adored. He had been a Corporal for around eighteen months now, but the last few days had been the making of him, we’d found his strength.
He was fantastic at calming a situation down. Here we were, somewhere in Northern France, making for the coast, surrounded by enemy soldiers, one of us severely wounded, and yet, his dulcet, calming tones, had such a soothing effect on all of us, that we could almost forget where we were.
It was impossible though, the warm blood that had begun to seep through my fingers was staining my skin. Arthur was losing pint after pint of blood, every second a new hole opening up somewhere for it to leak out of. I was pushing down hard on his neck, my fingers straddling the large chunk of wood now embedded in it. I was forcing my hand down on him so hard that, for a moment, I wondered if it was me causing the choking sound in the back of his throat. A slight relief of pressure however, confirmed I was doing the right thing, and the compression on his neck was returned to n
ormal.
My hands were filthy and I almost felt guilty about what would be entering young Arthur Knight’s body as I held him pinned to the ground. I had jumped in rancid irrigation ditches, used the palms of my hand to clean myself after squatting in a bush, I had eaten off them. I repulsed even myself as I thought back to what I had done to myself, what I had put my body through over the last few days. All so that I could retain a little bit of pride, and not be one of those who flicks a white handkerchief above his head. I would not do that.
I looked down at Arthur, I had taken him under my wing considerably since meeting him. I knew that he was capable and willing, but his head was all over the place, which for a young eighteen-year-old, was fair enough. He had seen death on a scale that no one should ever have to see, never mind someone so young who may live for another fifty odd years carrying that kind of memory along with them.
When people talk of memories, we instinctively think of happy ones. Childhood memories, running around with your parents with not a single care in the world, memories from recent years like getting married, having a child. These are all happy memories, the go-to thoughts when someone asks you to think of something. Not so for soldiers. A soldier’s memories are rarely happy, and, if they are, they are always clouded, diluted by a darker memory of despair. Arthur would be desperately trying to conjure up an image of a happier time now, a time when he would be spending his life in the fields of Devon, with his family. His family had a small piece of land on which they kept several sheep and his beloved dog, Betsy, would sprint round all day, so he had said. His father was the local vicar and as I began to pray, I hoped Arthur was doing the same, willing him earnestly to try and get right with God, because surely, he was soon about to meet him.
