by Thomas Wood
His face softened slightly, it was working. I was surprisingly good at this. “They need to see a medic running around. They need to see someone that’s willing to help. It helps them fight.”
He didn’t say anything, but he dropped to his knees and carried on applying a bandage to a corporal’s upper arm. Once he had finished, he grabbed his satchel, and puffed his cheeks out, “All right then, you lead the way.”
The Captain must have been watching this debacle as I caught a glimpse of his back as he left the casement. It was at this moment that the unmistakeable sound of mortar rounds, colliding with the ground began to erupt all around us. People always ask me what it feels like when you can hear the round, whistling its way through the sky, getting closer and closer to you, before it explodes near you. The reality is completely different. A mortar round travels faster than the speed of sound, you don’t hear a whistle, the first thing you know about it, is the ground around you being turned to a fine dust, and you feel yourself floating through the air. There is no warning, no chance to launch yourself behind any solid cover.
The area was still littered with wounded soldiers, many of them were German, and we had a large number of prisoners under our control in the vicinity, which the Germans who were doing the shelling must have known by now. The idea that they were shelling their own men, seemed utterly deplorable to me, the friends of those lying here, were the ones who were pushing the rounds down the tube. I wondered if they felt any sense of remorse, or if they were just so hell bent on wiping the rest of our force out that they didn’t care who died alongside us.
There was no other option for us but to carry on, we had to leave the casement, the mortar rounds probably signified that a counter attack was on the way, but also, we didn’t want to be left behind by the main body of the battalion, even if there was so little of us that we would struggle to fill a double-decker.
I found myself jogging, just behind the Captain, trying to guess where the next round would land, as dirt and debris was sucked into my lungs as I ran through cloud after cloud of settling earth. I didn’t know for how long I would have to run, I couldn’t work out what the Germans had zeroed in on as their target. But all I knew was an overpowering sense of wanting to stay alive now, after making it to this point, all I wanted to do was keep breathing. With every pace that I took, my legs felt like a heavier block of lead, like they would drag me to the ground to wait for the explosion.
For a half second, I don’t know why, but I looked at the Captain running ahead of me, focusing on his back, aiming to catch up, like a sprinter totally focused on the finish line, except my finish line was moving further and further away every second.
Suddenly, the Captain rose up, and I could have sworn that I saw him clutch at the sides of his beret, like he was trying to keep it in place, as he shot backwards. I found myself lying flat on my back, and watched as his limp body came crashing back down to the earth.
When I managed to stagger to my feet, Harry was already over by his side, ripping away at his clothes to inspect the damage. He had a piece of shrapnel embedded in his groin, and a leaking wound in his stomach. Harry was immediately more concerned with the leg injury, and began tearing at the Captain’s trouser leg, while simultaneously blindly opening, and fumbling around in his medical kit.
“Walshy, come on, you’ll be killed out here!”
“You go, I can save this one!” It suddenly dawned on me that he had become a machine, that he was seeing each of his casualties, not as patients, but as things, and that nothing that I was going to say would stop him from tending to the Captain. I had no other option but to stay here, to guard him, or at least be with him, when he too, was hit by a mortar. I pulled at my bayonet, and started slashing away at his smock, pulling it apart as I weakened it, till all I was looking at was skin.
I took one look at the bloody mess before me and began to feel a change of heart coming on.
29
“No Walsh, this is not happening, we’re going!”
I made to get up and leave, like a conniving parent does, trying to force their child into following him, but Harry didn’t move.
“How many more times!” I screamed, hard enough to rip a few blood vessels in the back of my throat. “If you stay here, you’re putting more lives in danger, you know we have to go!”
He ignored me, his head down as if he was saying a silent prayer, focusing on the wounds that the Captain had become incapacitated by. I felt like one of the worst human beings in the world, I was displaying a coldness, a callous streak that I didn’t think I possessed, getting the one person who could save the Captain, to leave him, to die amongst the barrage of mortars that were still raining down all around us. I comforted myself briefly with the fleeting thought that what I was doing, was justified somehow, by trying to keep Harry alive. He was still my sole focus, my only reason for still being outside, instead of finding some decent cover.
“Move!” I hollered, becoming shocked at myself, as I found the barrel of my rifle, pointing directly at Harry’s chest. A round landed a bit too close, and I found myself head to head with Harry, leaning over the body of the Captain, preventing any falling debris from further injuring him, but also stopping any molten metal from blinding either of us.
Once the dust had settled, I found that my rage had not subsided, and the rifle resumed its threatening position, unwaveringly pointing at the centre of his torso.
“You’re not going to shoot me, Sir,” he uttered calmly as he began to work out how to patch up the Captain, “you’re here to keep me alive. No other reason for you to be here. I’ve known it all along.”
I wondered momentarily if he was talking about me being part of the invasion force, that I had no reasoning to be part of it all, which was true, I had been offered a training position a few months ago that meant I wouldn’t have to face the onslaught of bullets for at least another six months. I felt suddenly uneasy about the whole situation, had he known that I had turned it down so that I could keep an eye on him, did he know that I had done a bit of digging on his background and tried to find ways to get him transferred out, to a safer posting?
I settled myself with the idea that he merely meant being out here, with him, in amongst the flying mortars and the inevitable machine gun fire that would soon accompany the hollers of counter-attacking soldiers.
“The Captain here has no other family apart from his Dad too, that’s why I have to help him Sir, he ain’t like the other ones I’ve tried to treat.” He looked up from his patient for a moment, giving himself just enough time to utter, “He’s just like me, c’mon.”
The urge to explode at him, to tell him off like a naughty child and drag him to the nearest cover, disappeared as another mortar sprinkled us with a fine covering of dirt. The now irresistible urge, to stay and help, was one that infuriated me, going against everything I had been taught, and everything that I taught others. But I had no choice. This was important to Harry, so it was important to me.
The Captain’s skin was stained red already, and the flow of blood was made worse by his rapid, shallow breathing. I pulled a dressing from his smock pocket and ripped it open. I splashed away at the blood with my hand, trying to clear some so that I could make out where the actual wound was, in case I applied the dressing to a pool of blood rather than the actual bleed. I located a small hole in the well of blood, that was now gushing from his stomach. I pushed the dressing down on him hard, and kept it there, trying to fool the blood into thinking I was part of the skin.
It was only then that I realised his howling, like a werewolf screaming at a full moon, so I tried to calm him in my inadequate tones. I told him over and over about how it was going to be alright, while I watched Harry splashing away in the blood. Eventually he finished, and moved onto his stomach.
“Okay, we’re going to need to sit him up.”
I did as I was told and the howls intensified to the point that I thought my eardrums would burst. There was no exit wound
, which was good for the short-term health of the Captain, as it meant that he only had two holes to bleed out of, instead of three. The risk of infection later on though, if he lived that far, was incredibly high.
Harry began applying another dressing, tying this one around his back, so tight that his stomach seemed to bulge from the pressure.
“Right then, that’s all we can do. You have just helped save a life CSM Baker.” I hadn’t done much, but I felt like I’d helped, I’d given the Captain at least half a chance of surviving, as long as he didn’t take a direct hit, he might not actually bleed out now. I felt good, like I had given this man a new lease of life. If I hadn’t been constantly reminded of a war by the falling bombs, I would have celebrated, commemorated this moment as one of the proudest of my life.
But elation and self-congratulation was cut short by Harry, “…but, we have to go now, don’t we?” He said reluctantly, looking up at me, like a kid who had just asked for something for his birthday, that was way out of what his parents could afford. I opened my mouth to speak, but it wasn’t my voice that was answering, it was a weak, almost forlorn crackle that spoke.
“Get to the Calvary, quickly…”
The Captain half-smiled as he spoke, revealing to us a mouth packed with blood, fused nicely with a sticky phlegm that he was trying to cough up and out of the way of his airways.
“Yeah…come on Harry, time to move. On three…” I gave him the countdown and watched as he got up, head bent forward as he made for the relative safety of a concrete bunker, clutching at his swinging medical kit as he surged forwards. Thankfully, he didn’t look back.
“Come on then, Sir, let’s get you moving, shall we?”
“What are you playing at Baker, leave me alone.”
“What, were you thinking of staying the night there sir? No way, there’s a nice little five-star hotel I know of just over here, you’ll love it.” My weak joke, got an even weaker laugh back from the Captain, as I started to drag him, holding onto his webbing and pulling with all my might, while he tried to push along with his good leg.
I felt like I was going to be sick as I heaved for what felt like the thousandth time, but the trail of blood that we had been leaving behind, like a macabre Hansel and Gretel, had indicated that we had only moved a number of metres, not quite halfway to the casement yet.
“You can’t leave me now Norm,” the Captain said as I released his weight to the ground for a moment, “I’ll have you court martialled if you do.” His joke was stronger than mine, but got only a weak acknowledgement, from himself and not from me. It had crossed my mind to leave him, I was putting myself at risk here, and for what?
What would he go on to do if I got him to safety? He would be shipped off home to recover and so had absolutely no operational use to us for at least a number of months, by which time the war would be over. He looked like he would lose his leg anyway and so would be out of the army quicker than a young soldier going to the NAAFI with his first pay check. He was of no real use to anyone now, he was as good as dead.
But he had no one, apart from his father. I wondered what had happened to his mother and whether he had had any brothers or sisters at some point, whether he had gone through some traumatic experience of losing his family members in a similar way to Harry. I thought of Harry’s father, a combat hardened, VC-winning veteran, reduced to tears if he was to learn of his only surviving family member, his only son even, having been killed by this merciless war. It was that image, that gave me strength, from somewhere, to lever the Captain up and onto my back, as I half ran, half stumbled towards safety.
A few, curious faces poked out at us as we staggered towards them, none of them was Harry.
“Get lost the lot of you! Get to the Calvary! Get to the Calvary!”
Some of them obeyed the mythical monster that came surging out of the mist, but others still stared, transfixed.
“They’ll be coming soon! The Germans! They’re coming!” Their hypnosis was broken, and all of them, from what I could see in my hunched over position, broke out into a panic-stricken sprint as they made for the firm base near the Calvary.
“Go on, get lost,” came the voice that was strapped to my back, chuckling to himself as he said it, too quiet and timid to be heard amid all the clamour.
“They’re on their way, sir. Nearly there.” I grunted, struggling for breath by now.
“No, Baker…I mean you, get lost. If you leave it much longer, that’s you done for. Your luck’s running out mate.”
By the time my weary brain had contemplated his order, my legs, like automatons, had pulled us to the casement.
I threw him off my back and faced him.
“I’ll see you later, sir?”
“Sure, Norm, see you later. Thanks.”
As I turned my back on him, I heard the click of his revolver, as he checked how many rounds he had to spare.
A few men were bursting forwards, just ahead of me. Good, I thought, they won’t have left the muster point just yet then.
30
There was a strange irony to me running towards Calvary. It was not something that I had ever imagined I would do and yet, here I was, running towards it, as if my life depended on it. Which it did.
I do not know where I found the energy to charge like I did on that night, I had never run that fast in my life before, I have never done since, especially with the amount of kit that I still had on, clinging to every part of my body that seemed like it was able to bear some weight.
I may have got the energy from some unknown source, but my motivation continued to drive me forward, never waning in my desire to save Harry Walsh, to get him home to his Dad so that they could live in one another’s company for as long as was possible. I knew what it was like to return home, out of a combat zone, and try and find someone that understood, but it was impossible. It would be easier for them though, they would have each other and although they had fought in two, very different wars, the understanding would be the same. At least I hoped it would.
Maybe they would never talk about it, maybe just the silent acknowledgement that life would never be the same again for either of them would be enough, the knowledge that one another had seen things, done things, that any normal person on the Home Front, would never understand, never even, imagine.
So many bodies were now scattered all over the ground, that I found it strange to even imagine what it would look like without them. It was as if they were part of the landscape now, part of France, and I couldn’t picture what the whole place would look like once this party was over. Maybe, in a few years, people would make the pilgrimage here, to look at where so many heroes fell, without thinking for a moment of the suffering and pain that they went through, what their families would go through for years afterwards.
The bodies had become so common in my mind, that I barely looked at most of them, staring only at them as if they were an annoyance, a hazard that was there that would trip me up and send me crashing to the ground. They weren’t people anymore, they were objects.
One body caught my eye as I cannoned towards it, the flash of a red armband on one arm catching my attention, and holding it as I flew forwards. As I got closer, the shape sharpened, and I could make out more details. It was definitely a medic lying there, definitely one that had recently been working on a bloodied patient, his hands stained red.
It didn’t take me long to reach him, and as I skidded to a halt, throwing up some of the recently redistributed earth, my breathing faltered as I tried to get more oxygen into my body. I felt sick as my breathing got more and more sporadic, a mixture of grief and tiredness getting the better of my ability to breathe.
As I stared at him, the first doubts began to creep into my mind. If I hadn’t insisted on dragging the Captain, if I had been with him when he ran, would he still be alive?
I looked at the lifeless body of Harry Walsh, and wondered if there would ever be a point in my life again where I felt like I had succeeded, lik
e I had completed something that I had set out to do. I had failed here, where it mattered most, an instance of life or death, and in that moment, my mind did not allow me to see past my failure, how I had let Harry down.
A trickle of blood began to drip down his face, as I pulled him up towards me, resting him on my knees. I felt like I would be lost in this maze of hatred forever, I would always be a symbol of failure to myself and that I would never break out of it, never see the light again.
I was empty once more, consumed by the darkness that had been lurking in my soul, ever since 1940, chipping away at my ability to feel, my ability to soldier even my ability to think of a future. I was convinced now that I would never have one, even if I was to survive this war, I would not survive myself.
The blood began to falter, as it tried to make its way over the dirt. He had a gash on his head, just above his eyebrow, but under the rim of his helmet, so that it was plainly visible to me. The rest of his face was caked in mud, not the cam cream that he had smeared over himself, but a drier, more distinctive look of earth, plastered to his face.
His mouth was hanging open, rather limply, almost like he had gone to yawn but had never quite got enough energy to follow through with the action, stuck in a frozen position, not closed, but not fully open either. It took me a while to realise that from this half-opened mouth, I was feeling the coolness of his breath as he began to expel the air from his lungs, interrupted momentarily as he drew breath once again, weakly, faintly. I put my ears to his lips and listened, hard, I didn’t want to get this wrong. If he was dead, I would have to leave him, but if there was the smallest chance that he was still alive, I would have to stay with him.
His breathing was weak, almost non-existent, but the fact that it was existent, was enough for me. I pulled my head back, so as to get a proper look at his face, not really knowing what the next stage was, did I shake him to wake him up? Or did I just leave him to wake up of his own accord? But how long would that take?
