by Thomas Wood
It was the blood that I saw first, at least, that’s what I remember seeing first. It seems that the human brain is wired to recognise the sight of blood, before becoming fixated on it, almost to the point that everything else is drowned out, paled into insignificance. The amount of deep, dark coloured scarlet blood was so copious that it seemed to be unable to seep into the ground, a great surplus of it just sat, patiently on the surface, waiting for its turn to be able to find a nook or a crevice somewhere to deposit a few more fluid ounces, watering the ground.
After staring at the blood for a moment, almost marvelling at the way in which this fluid was so vital to our everyday life, I began to look around some more, I began to regain my desire to take in as much information as I possibly could about this incredible situation. I had been blown up and, so far, I had survived, with no pain or obvious injuries to speak of. But it was as I moved my head round, that my mind began to realise that maybe, just maybe, all was not as well as it seemed.
The level of adrenaline in my body seemed to deteriorate further as the first throbs of pain began to poke through into my conscious mind, not enough to incapacitate me, or make me scream, but enough to let me know that I wasn’t going to be running on all cylinders for a while.
It was the leg that began to worry me. It was so obviously not attached to my being now, as it had come to rest some four or five feet away from where the rest of me had landed. It was strange, seeing it there, the boot and foot almost untouched, like it had been pulled off some sort of manakin or doll with the lightest of touches, without blemishing any part of it. As I ran my eyes up the leg, the closer it got to the point of separation, the more blood, and bits of sinewy mess there was. When I reached the top, there was just a hole, like part of it had been hollowed out almost with a spoon. Protruding from the top of it, like a gruesome flagpole, was the shin bone, stained red, but still quite visibly, and proudly a bone. It poked from the top of the wound and was intertwined with what one can only assume as muscle and tendons.
I stared at it for what must have only been five, maybe six seconds, before the pain really kicked in. Suddenly, it was as if a red-hot poker, the kind that had been heated over an open flame for a nice, long period of time, ready to brand the new bull, had been plunged into my right leg. It felt as though it had been hot enough to make the skin wince, shirking back to uncover the vulnerable innards of the leg that it had been trying to protect. As I felt the flesh being seared by this red-hot poker, I let out a roar, not the brave hearted, lion-like roar that I would have liked, but a pathetic, childlike, roar, more akin to a squeal.
With my squealing, I shot up, a shooting pain passing through my chest as I sat up, before taking a look down at my leg. Almost triumphantly, I began to laugh. I had two legs. My lower body was mostly intact. Apart from what appeared to be a piece of barbed wire, embedded into my leg, running lengthways from just below the knee to the ankle, I was still a fully functioning human being.
My scoffs of disbelief and overwhelming relief, began to turn into chuckles, before I found myself almost roaring with laughter.
But then, the horrific realisation that, if it hadn’t been my limb that was lying, motionless, unattached on the ground, then it must have been someone else’s, and no one else had been around me at the moment I had felt the rug pulled from underneath my feet.
No one. Except Harry.
I scrambled to my feet, like a child who was just about to be caught with his hand in the treat tin, my hands and feet both splashing and sliding in the blood that made the grass more slippery than if it had had a fresh coating of dew on it. The pain in my leg burned more than it had ever done before, the poker feeling as if it was resting heavily on the nerves. But no feeble shriek came from my mouth.
I became solely focused on finding Harry, reattaching his leg if I could and continuing on in our journey to the RV. I could see his body, lying a few feet from where I had been laid up, and as I scrambled over to him, he came more into focus. He was lying face down in the mud, almost like he was sulking over something that he had been told he couldn’t have. His right leg was completely severed from his body, the wound above his right knee much cleaner and finite than what I had been expecting to see. As I rolled him over, most of his uniform on his right side had been burned away, as had the skin on the right-hand side of his face. Blood poured from his chest and side, and his mouth hung open, more so on his right side where it sloped downwards, almost as if a candle had been held there for too long and had begun to melt his face away.
I felt the sledgehammer collide with my stomach, at which point I fell backwards, slumping on the backs of my heels. He was only a teenager. He was meant to grow up, get a proper education, a career, do something with his life. He was supposed to find a girl, marry and have children, surround himself with love and affection. I had his whole life planned out in my mind, but now, utter heartbreak.
It was then that I began to question myself, doubt myself; Was he actually dead? Had I done everything that I could?
I scrambled over to him again.
Did he have a pulse?
Was he breathing?
Come on, what else could I do? What else could I remember from the training?
I began to panic, I had to be doing something, I needed to. Pulling at the satchel that was still faithfully around his neck, I began searching for a dressing, a piece of cloth, anything to try and patch him up with. But I found nothing. All he had were a few doses of morphine left. Besides, he had no pulse. He hadn’t taken a breath for well over thirty seconds. He was gone this time.
My heartbreak turned to guilt, anger even, at myself, at this war, at the utter depravity of the man who pushed the mortar round down the tube, the man who ordered the shot. These feelings of guilt and anger replayed over and over in my mind for the next five minutes as I sat back on my heels, staring at the body of Private Harry Walsh. What about his father? Harry had been the backbone of his family, the family that had gradually got smaller and smaller until it had been just Harry and his Dad left. Now what? How would his father cope? Would he cope?
I allowed all these feelings to keep hopping into my mind, but the overriding thought that kept coming to me was that I now had to fight for myself. It was no longer me looking out for Harry, no longer me and him fighting together. It was now just me, on my own.
As I got up, searching around unsuccessfully for my weapon, I realised how I had managed to consistently fail in what I had set out to achieve. I had let Harfield, Vidler, Knight and Carter down as we retreated back in ’40, I had made some stupid decisions which had ultimately cost them their lives. And now, I had let Harry down, I had failed to keep him alive, failed to get him back to his Dad. It was on the back of this, that I would have to go into my next fight.
I had to make it to the Calvary.
33
The mortars had all but stopped now, almost as if the Germans knew that my world had already been blown apart and that now, wanting to be hit by one of their mortars, they were taunting me. Every now and then, one would explode somewhere behind me, like they were using up the last of the rounds that they had, more out of fun than an act of war.
I did not run this time, maybe out of a sense of wanting to die, needing to die, but also possibly because I simply couldn’t. I had nothing left in me. No energy, no drive, no desire. Not even any hatred. I was desperately empty. I staggered, one leg falling with an increasing frailty, each one seeming like it would be the last one that I ever took. I stumbled past bits of debris, discarded and broken weapons, spent casings and scorched patches of earth. The craters loomed larger than they seemed to have done before, and I made a concerted effort to work my way around them, not wanting to fall into the black pit lurking at the bottom. I stepped over body after body, some with limbs still attached, many without. Some still had faces, where others had had theirs scorched off, all facial features being completely wiped away. Entrails and the innards of the human body seemed to cover the whol
e area, like a bloody carpet, glistening away in the semi-darkness of the early morning. I did not take any of them into account though. I remember them, I can recall every detail about every body that I saw, every young man who had had his later years swiped from him, quicker than I had been blasted off my feet.
I saw them, I remember them, but I do not feel anything about them. They had been my boys, the ones that I had wanted to look after, to nurture, but now they were simply slabs of meat, gradually becoming colder and colder as the last of their natural functions began to come to an end. I did not feel sadness, or empathy or sickness, nothing like that, they were here and now, they weren’t. None of them mattered to me anymore, I had failed Harry, I had failed all of them, nothing, no one would matter to me anymore.
But despite that, despite all of what I was feeling and seeing, I had to carry on, this time for myself. What was the point in me fooling myself that I would be able to look after people in this war? We would all end up dead anyway, and every day that I managed to survive, would now be a curse to me, a tumultuous purgatory between my tormented soul and eternal rest. That’s what drove my legs to carry on stumbling, to fall in front of each other until I made it to the RV point.
As I stumbled up the dirt track road, I began to make out faces, uniforms, of people that I knew. Some of them had survived. The Canadians still sat there expectantly, weapons raised, ready to fight for us if necessary, to make us feel as secure as we possibly could.
As I approached the group who were on rear guard, I could only muster a hoarse, almost alien voice from my throat.
“I’ll be the last. No one else was left moving down there.”
The only reply I received was an immortal stare, as if I had been the only man to survive the whole sorry episode. I almost expected it to be true, and that me and the Canadians would be the only ones who could carry on the fight together. Fortunately, more and more uniforms came into view, with the occasional acknowledgement of my presence, and the even rarer nod of approval from myself. I needed a break.
Up ahead, I could see the Calvary, a big wooden structure, that had acted as a reference point for so much of the planning for the attack. It felt strange to see it in person, to stand at the foot of it and look directly up at it, arching my back in such a way that it could almost snap. I felt my eyes fill with tears as I looked up at it, a combination of my emotions but also the physical impossibility of the tears escaping as I stood with my head near horizontal. I pulled my body back into a more natural position, and let the stinging sensation take hold, as I let the water roll down my face, feeling each drop carve out a valley in the dirt and blood that had now dried on my face.
I wanted to go up to the cross, to touch it, to see if it would settle me, make me feel vindicated in any way. But I couldn’t, a figure was sat at the bottom, blocking my approach. As he removed his head from his hands to look at me, I realised that it was the Colonel.
He did not look at me with tears in his eyes, like I looked at him, but with a resigned emptiness to them, a look of total dejection and despair.
“You made it Sergeant-Major.”
“Sir…”
“It was my plan…mine that got these boys kil—” He seemed to cut himself off curtly as he realised that his ranting and melancholy would do no good for the rest of the fight, and it would have an even more despairing effect if anybody nearby were to overhear him. In that short outpouring of his mind however, I was able to determine exactly how he felt, for I was feeling the same.
Human sacrifice is a part of war and we both knew it would be coming, but to be faced with another task after another task, with the possibilities of the number of your men being whittled down further and further each time, possibly every day, was far too heavy a weight to bear.
“La Plein, Sir?” I enquired, trying with every fibre of my being to retain some of the determination and steadfastness that my rank demanded. Looking up at me he grimaced, with a short, sharp exhalation out of his nostrils at my apparent desire to carry on.
“La Plein, Mr Baker…we carry on. We carry on, Norman.” I sat down next to him, pulling out a packet of Player’s cigarettes from my top pocket. “I don’t normally,” he said, taking the one I offered up to him, “but I suppose tonight is one of those nights. It could even be my last,” his laugh was mixed with more than just a hint of sadness.
“We carry on, Norm…I don’t know for how much longer we can carry on…but we will. We must.” His battle cry was far from Shakespeare’s imagining of Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt, but it was enough for me, enough to pull me out of the endless circle of pity and sorrow for myself. At least until I made it home that was.
I finished off my cigarette, before tossing it to the floor, making sure it was fully extinguished with the toe of my boot. I stood up, trying to take stock of the situation, trying my best to focus on the here and the now, rather than what had just felt like the centre of my world being destroyed. I needed to find a weapon first and foremost, I was next to useless without one.
I panned round, trying to see where I could locate one from. As I did so, I realised that my helmet was now no longer in my possession either. That would be easier to replace, but, for now, I decided it would be best to place my maroon beret on my head, as I took more comfort from the men of the Parachute Regiment, than a thin piece of steel that had abandoned me so quickly.
Men were lying in the ditches and slight depressions that occupied the side of the dirt track, some of them barely visible unless you were standing right on top of them. Some of them were sitting there smoking, sharing the odd puff of a cigarette here and there, just letting the glow of the tip of the cigarette to warm their face as well as their insides. Others just sat, morosely, not looking at anything in particular, staring straight at the ground but evidently replaying the events of the last hour and a half over and over in their minds. These boys had lost friends, brothers, not just in the action, but in the drop as well. Some had drowned in the flooded fields around the drop zone, while others were lost in the literal sense. I wondered if we’d ever see some of those boys ever again – I didn’t hold out much hope.
No one spoke. There wasn’t even a gentle murmur of encouragement or remembrance, no conferring of who had done what and who had seen who go down. Just total silence. A total silence that was resigned to the fact that we would go on, we must go on, there was a bigger picture here, a bigger battle to be won. And we were an integral part of that.
A wave of emotion and admiration overcame me, like the proudest parent who had ever walked the earth, at what these boys had become, what they had done, in the name of their duty but also out of fear. Each one of them had become heroes to me in that instant, as well as the ones who were lying around, alongside Harry, waiting to be secured in a battlefield grave for ever more.
I sniffed and fought back tears for the second time in a matter of minutes, as I made my way over to where a group of three or four wounded men, who had managed to get away from the hell of the battery. One of them had a Sten by his side, which I duly picked up, before easing off his bandolier which contained the magazines for the weapon. There wasn’t many, but there was enough to get me by, and there was every chance that before long I would be able to pick up another, and another, as more of these boys surrendered their weapons to the fight for their life.
As I rubbed my eyes once again, fusing my tired eyes with grease, sweat, blood and dirt, the last of the adrenaline seemed to begin wearing off. The pain in my leg began to sear, even hotter before, as the poker was reheated and reapplied to my limb. I began to wince, clamping my back teeth down on each other so hard that I thought I’d never be able to reopen my mouth ever again. I made my way over to the foot of the cross and plonked myself down once again.
“Painful?” the Colonel remarked, a question I thought so stupid that I did not give him an answer. He made a movement towards me, and before I knew it, he was plastering burn jelly to my leg, which was surprisingly more s
oothing than I had anticipated.
“Grabbed it from one of my RAF pals,” he said looking up at me, with an element of pride to his voice. “Let it dry before you cover it up, hopefully that’ll see you through.”
“When are we leaving, Sir?”
He looked up at me again with another grimace, almost like he was annoyed that I hadn’t let him wallow in his moment of self-congratulation.
“Any minute now Sergeant-Major, any minute, just a few more things I need to sort out…” It was strange that he had helped me out in this way, I never expected a superior officer to have cared for me in such a way as this, but I was incredibly grateful for the Colonel at that moment in time, as a great deal of pain had subsided already. I watched him walk away purposefully, towards the remnants that were his officers, one of whom was now occupying a stretcher, apparently organising an attack on our next target.
As I sat there waiting, no matter how hard I tried to block it out, all I could see was the image of Harry lying there, one limb some way away from him, his face completely unrecognisable and twisted. I pondered whether there had been anything else I could have done for him, but quickly concluded that there wasn’t. It had been a freak occurrence, we just so happened to be running across that section of the battery when the order was given to fire that mortar. There was nothing I could have done.
Harry’s war was over. His life was. But my war would continue, it would continue for many more months, years even. I knew, as I sat at the foot of Calvary, that my battlefield would soon change. It wouldn’t be fought in France or even with guns and bullets. I would be fighting against myself, against that darkness that had loomed and threatened for so long, but slowly seemed to be getting the better of me.
