by Thomas Wood
We sat, in darkness, in total silence for a few minutes, before the three of us made the silent decision to continue on under the midnight sky.
15
Sergeant Greene’s body was most likely going cold now, and I suddenly felt a warmness to my body as I began to recognise the finite state of my own mortality, I knew I would die some day. What about today?
“Here, take this,” grumbled Red, as he pulled a mouldy potato from an upturned cart and tossed it my way in the casual manner a wicket keeper would as he passed the ball back to his bowler.
“Go on, have it, they’re alright.” Apprehensively, I bit into it, like it was some variety of exotic apple, instantly regretting the pressure that Red had put on me to take one. It began to itch my teeth and it dried my mouth out almost instantly as I went in for another mouthful. To begin with, I started pulling the legs off that had sprouted from the skin, but I quickly learned that they were just as good a source of energy as any other, so I ate the lot. The raw potato churned around in my stomach and burned my drying mouth but did not stop me from motioning to Red to throw me another. Within a matter of minutes, all three of us had a crippling stomach ache, but a manageable one which settled into contentment some minutes later.
I felt continuously foolish, I had been directly responsible for Major Perkin’s demise, Clarke’s death and now I had been responsible for the fact that Sergeant Greene lay motionless and cold in a French forest. I was in charge of each of these men as I led them into battle and every time I had failed to lead them out of the situation without a fatality of some sort. I began to question whether I should continue, as if I had become some sort of bad omen to the men that meant they would continue to die all around me while I survived. I thought too of relinquishing control and handing it over to Red, who had the natural aptitude to make the right decisions it seemed.
Progressively, with every single pace that my blistered feet took, I began to feel like I was a boy still, thrust into the vicious centre of a man’s world, I wondered how much longer I would last before I was caught out and ripped from it with a single bullet.
The headache and the permanent feeling of thirst and hunger was back to haunt me, lingering in my insides like a worm that wriggled each time I had just thought I had forgotten all about it. The pain that shot through my stomach would be felt by Red and Evans just as much as me and I knew that we would need to find some sort of proper sustenance, rather than raw potatoes, before very long.
As we came to an open field, we walked through the furrows, rather than the road that ran adjacent to it, in case we attracted any unwanted attention, particularly from the air. Our feet thumped into the disturbed earth of the field and great clumps of it began to stick to my boots, almost doubling the weight of each of my legs, but still, we pressed on. The further into the field we got, the more focused things appeared, and it became apparent that there was a dry-stone wall up ahead, which seemed to mark the perimeter for a small outhouse. We approached it cautiously, before congregating together, behind the perceived safety of the wall.
The outhouse looked relatively small, with maybe two rooms downstairs and one upstairs, situated around one hundred yards away from the perimeter wall around it. Before we could convene our thoughts as one, Red was already up and over the wall, silently throwing his large, burly frame, towards the miniature outhouse, not taking his large tree trunk legs too long, before he launched himself at the wall.
Red seemed to freeze for a moment, not moving a muscle even half an inch, barely even allowing his chest to heave up and down and suck in some air but, like a switch had been thrown, he began waving his arms manically at us to get us to follow on behind him. I slapped Evans on the back as he began to rise from his position, following more or less religiously in Red’s giant footsteps. I peered over the top of the wall, bringing my rifle up to rest on it, just in case an enemy machine gun decided to appear now and spray the ground that Evans was running on with burningly hot darts. I felt almost proud of Charlie as he bundled his way towards Red, like I didn’t think he was somehow capable of sporadic moments of bravery, or if in some way his courage had been down to me being with him and spurring him on. I pushed the thought away from my mind as I realised that it was arrogance and complacency that got a man killed and not, as many at home believed, an enemy bullet.
I knew that Red would have his rifle raised and ready, just like me, in the event of a sudden enemy attack and a wave of serenity washed over me that the two rifles would be prepared to respond as I tried my best to make it in one piece, despite the fact that I was running on empty and my legs felt so heavy that they did not even feel like they were my own.
I hopped over the wall like a small six-year-old child and immediately regretted the vigour with which I had jumped, stumbling slightly at the lack of energy that I possessed, I soon re-found my footing and before too long was charging faster than I ever thought I could, towards the two figures who stared at me as I flew towards them. I kept my head up at them and tried my best to stay alert and take in any changes in our surroundings, but I couldn’t focus on that, all I was thinking of was keeping my arms swinging from side to side as I made my way to my solid finish line.
The other two had seemed so graceful and silent as they had made their way to the building, whereas I felt like my legs were going to give up at any moment, especially when the cramp began to take hold in the arches of my feet. I felt like the ugly brother, running to catch up with his two elder siblings as they made their way over to chat up some girls, in short, I felt ridiculously out of place, completely unworthy of holding any kind of superiority over these two.
I prayed that the disorganised clatter of my kit, slamming itself into my body, wouldn’t alert any German soldiers in the near vicinity, as I physically wouldn’t be able to return fire in any way, for a considerable amount of time at least, for I was struggling to think anything at all due to the lack of oxygen, never mind walking through the motions of bringing the rifle up into the aim and squeezing the trigger.
I didn’t think to slow my speed as I made my approach to the ever-growing wall that I was focusing on, smashing into it with such a force that the noise alone felt like it would succeed in bringing the whole building crashing down with more success than a Stuka’s five-hundred-and-fifty-pound bomb.
Stopping, staring at our surroundings and listening to the point where I could feel my ears bleed began to be second nature to us and, as we stood there doing just that, clutching the wall of a farm labourer’s humble abode, I chuckled to myself as I imagined what we looked like. Three grown men, leaning against a stone wall, heads cocked to one side, mouths hanging wide open, panting and struggling to catch our breath, with more than one or two beads of sweat and saliva dripping from our bodies.
There was nothing. No movement in the trees behind us, none on our flanks; no sound from ahead or behind, not even from our own chests as our lungs screamed for more oxygen. Eventually, the pain in my chest threatened to burst outwards in a roar, and so I started drawing in oxygen through my wheezing mouth to calm myself down.
Still clinging to the wall, as if it was his own mother, Red sidestepped his way over to Charlie and me, not taking too much care in the way of keeping his noise down. He reached us and, when he did, he half whispered, half-shouted at us.
“The door is on the far side of the building, facing up towards the main farmhouse.” His eyes burned with excitement, one that I had not seen since we had been in our tank, he was enjoying this, maybe the infantry would be his future after all.
As I grated my back along the wall of the outhouse, I was momentarily thankful for the thickness of my uniform that spared me from parting with a thick layer of skin and, more importantly, prevented the nice ripping sound that I was sure would accompany it.
Our backs barely left the safety of the wall as we edged along the building’s sides, before arriving on the front side of the outhouse. Red had already begun preparing his weapon and himself to
make entry into the most basic of buildings, this is what it was all about with him; bursting into an enemy stronghold, taking out a platoon of enemy soldiers and rescuing a captured family in the process, before dusting off the newly pinned Victoria Cross that adorned his chest.
Red made it to the door frame, where he paused, allowing me and Charlie to do the same behind him, I was almost surprised that he had remembered we were there. I tapped Charlie on his side which sent a rippling effect forwards as he gave a gentle nudge into Red’s side too. We were ready to go in.
But nothing happened. Red had frozen. I watched as Evans gave a more forceful prod into Red’s shoulder, just to make sure he had felt it. But still, nothing from him.
Just as I was about to blast something in his earhole and burst through the door myself, I began to hear something, akin to a hum at first. The humming quickly grew louder and louder, until the buzzing, like a thousand hornets were inside my skull, was accompanied by the now familiar throbbing that pulsated its way across the field and up into the core of my body.
Out of the clear sky, a grey monster came charging towards us, flying so low that he barely cleared the farmhouse as he flew over it and I thought I saw a few roof tiles being removed by the draft of misplaced air that he caused.
I waited for the tip of his nose to dip slightly as his cannons began blasting away, strafing us before banking and turning for another run. Red still froze so I forced my way past Evans and uncermonially bundled him through the door. We couldn’t risk being seen by that pilot, not now after everything we had done.
The whole building shook as the Messerschmitt screeched overhead and we waited for a moment or two as the pulsating slowed and the grey demon failed to turn for a second look at us.
I yanked Red up from the floor, ready to blast him with so much verbal abuse that he would wish he was hit by the Messerschmitt’s cannons, but I couldn’t. The fire in his eyes had been extinguished, the desire to fight had completely gone. His eyes had morphed into a mess of bloodshot veins and tears as they began to slowly trickle down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I don’t know what happened.”
I tried to reply, but I couldn’t find the words, so instead set about searching the place with Evans.
The room we found ourselves in was small and basic, more like a storage building than where someone could live. A small table and a chair were solemnly pushed up against the wall, neatly slotted next to the fireplace which clearly doubled up as a cooking station, the singed pots and pans that lay all around it now home to a thousand different types of bugs and flies.
Adjacent to the fireplace and running the length of the back of the building was a long, sweeping worktop, coffee rings and scorch marks dotted about it, covered only in part by the random collection of empty jars and cans, all of which were empty, unless the fur covered remnants of decaying food was classed as having something in it.
The small, cast iron bathtub took up the role of centre feature in this room, surrounded by crusty towels and other paraphernalia discarded all around the edge, almost as if someone had left in a hurry, right in the middle of their bath time. The tub was battered and dented, with a small amount of scummy water taking up an inch or two at the bottom of the bath. A small bar of used, blackened soap still sat patiently, longing for its opportunity to cleanse the farm labourer after a hard day’s work once again.
“Over here,” rasped Evans, as he pulled at a peeling, creaking door that opened up into an unexpectedly large pantry area. Along three sides of the pantry, a box-like room, ran shelves of varying different types of wood, some had begun to rot, whereas others can’t have been in place for much longer than a matter of months.
Cans lay scattered all over the shelves of the pantry, some upended and others on their side, opening up their contents to our despairing eyes. Our stomachs groaned with anticipation and disappointment as we found ourselves staring at vacant cans and moulded remains, time after time.
Discarding another uninhabited jar of what was blackberry jam on the shelves I decided we had to do something.
“We need to get out of here. It’s clearly empty. We’ll try up at the farm, they’re bound to have something lying around. Sure of it.”
Red and Charlie just stared at me, the grumbling of their stomachs too loud to even think about listening to what I had just said. I realised I must have made sense to them as, when I moved towards the door, they came with me.
More dejected than ever before, we began to plan our next move, from the safety of the outhouse. From the front door, there was around six hundred yards of open field to cross, which was interrupted by a small bank of grass, which, from where we were, seemed to stand at about three feet tall, at the top of which we could see the farmhouse that proudly looked out over its land.
We had no other option but to simply go for it. One of my Dad’s mottos. We would start off in a slow walk and gradually pick our pace up the closer we got to the farmhouse, and closer we got to effective range of anything that might be lurking in the walls of the building. At least we knew that they didn’t have any mortars, otherwise we would have been nothing more than bits of body now, splattered all around the field, but all it would take would be one skilful soldier, to wipe out all three of us in less than one charger clip of rounds.
As we cautiously began our foray towards the farmhouse, we kept our heads up, scouting the building for any signs of movement, any signs of life, which became increasingly difficult as our heads bobbed away the quicker our pace got.
We ran in single file, but we kept a decent distance behind one another in the futile attempt to protect ourselves if the bullets did start flying. The idea was that by the time the first in the column, in this case Red, was hit, the other two would be able to throw themselves to the ground and find some cover. The only problem with that theory however was that it assumed there was some cover nearby, and that you weren’t charging across an open field when you needed to make use of it.
My feet began to clog up with mud and grow heavy as we began to push ourselves towards the farmhouse. Still, ahead of us, there was no movement from what I could see, the farm looked completely deserted. The gap between us began to close up as we excitedly made our way towards the grassy knoll with an ever-growing confidence.
I began to dream of what we might find inside, maybe a dozen chickens that had laid literally hundreds of eggs, all ready for us to take off them and scoff down. Maybe there was even a cow inside that was longing to be milked and I fantasised about throwing some of the creamy liquid down my neck, with a generous helping of French wine that we might find in the cellar.
My longings began to develop further, to the point where I even pictured a farmer’s wife ready and waiting for us, having watched us advance across the field, and the only weapons we would find in the farm were the knives and forks that she had laid out for us in preparation for a hearty feast.
Thwwwppp.
Suddenly, a round fizzed into the ground, just at my feet, embedding itself in the soft, absorpful soil of the French countryside. Red and Evans began to make movements to throw themselves to the ground, but I found myself screaming at them, “Get to the mound! Get to the bank!”
We must have still had a hundred yards or so to go before we got to the mound, but it felt like I only had to take two or three paces and I was already there, launching myself into it face first. Two more thumps by my side told me that Red and Evans had made it too.
“Did you see where that came from?” I hissed, spitting out a lump of grass that could have quite easily have satisfied my incredible hunger. The grass was sodden and had left a refreshing film of moisture on the surface of my face, which I hastily rubbed into my skin, as if it would somehow rub away all the perils that we would have to face.
“Nuh uh,” grunted Red begrudgingly, almost as if I had asked him to stand up and have a look at what was going on, he kept his face firmly embedded in the coolness of the French grass. I watc
hed as Evans, like a playful child, began rolling his way away from us, stopping every couple of turns to reach out and drag his rifle towards his centre of mass.
Slowly, tentatively, he began to pull himself up the bank, digging his toes in to hold himself in position. It didn’t take him too long to reach the top of the mound and I watched as the whites of his eyes seemed to bulge as he scanned the scene before him, Red and I could do nothing other than watch for his reaction.
Almost as soon as he had made it to the top, he was sliding back down the mound, clutching his rifle to his chest like it was his own mother.
He flashed a quick, anxious look over at us, before removing his steel helmet and placing it on the ground beside him. Gradually, he began to move, in such a way that we knew that everything that he was doing was deliberate, he had full control of himself at this moment in time.
Clutching his rifle in his right hand, he lifted it up so that the business end of it was pointing to the sky and just over the top of our parapet. He worked his way up the bank, eventually raising his left hand to the sky, stretching his arm out to full extension so that he would be clearly seen.
“Get down,” Red spat with a fair share of murderous aggression mixed in with his outburst of concern, just as I began scrabbling my way over to grip at a boot or a trouser leg, anything that I could that would send him crashing back down to our side of the bank.
I was too slow however and, by the time I had made it within touching distance of Charlie, he was already standing confidently on top of the mound, as if we hadn’t just been shot at by someone who was hiding on this farm.
I prepared myself to watch his lifeless body shoot backwards and tumble to the bottom of the mound as a hail of murderous bullets slammed their way through his innocent organs. I told myself that if that was to happen, I had surely already extended the poor boys’ life, especially if this was the kind of thing that he would have done, had he been on his own.
