by Thomas Wood
The Captain’s demeanour had made it even worse. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man that got nervous very often, and that it would take something drastic to make him behave in the manner that he did that night. The explicit nerves that the Captain showed on that night, did absolutely nothing to curb my own fretfulness about what lay ahead.
*Break*
The weather had turned dramatically overnight, the warm uninterrupted sunshine now seemed further away than the very depths of the Australian outback, with the great rolling, suffocating clouds that now clung to the very landscape we now occupied.
The early morning dew began to work its magic on the cloth of my uniform, making it cling to me like another layer of skin, itching at my body each and every time I dared to move, all the while making me feel ten stone heavier.
Everywhere I looked seemed to be enshrouded in one long, heavy, continuous cloud of grey, not breaking in any way, not even to allow one stream of light to burst through. The fog was thick, choking even, so dense that I could barely make out the outline of my rifle, which was only an arm’s reach away.
I lay on my front, crushing my insides to the point where I had to alleviate some of the pressure by resting my hand on the tops of my knuckles and propping them up on my elbows. I needed to have all the distractions taken away from me at this moment, I needed to be able to listen intently. I took more comfort than I probably should have done from the fact that I knew Red and Lambert were lying beside me somewhere, both of them doing exactly the same as me, with just as much fear and excitement in equal measure.
As I felt around in the semi-darkness for my rifle, I found myself longing for home. It was difficult to think of happy memories now, difficult to recall faces and their features of even the closest of my family members.
I wondered if I would be able to recognise my own parents, I was fairly certain they wouldn’t be able to recognise me any longer. Their tall and wiry son, the one who had led his school cricket team to county glory five years earlier, had now put on an untold amount of weight and muscle and had been trained to kill. I found it impossible to think how much I had learned, how much I had changed over the last few months, and I barely thought it possible to recognise myself, never mind how my parents would identify me.
I tried to distract myself from yet another episode of my wandering mind by raising my hand up to my face and inspecting the grime that was resting under my fingernails. After catching a pungent whiff of decaying meat, I found myself wiping my hands on the grass and scratching at the surface of the ground trying to force earth under my nails rather than whatever was currently residing there.
The fog continued to choke me as I thought about my journey back to the farmhouse. We were lying in the field, about three hundred yards from the courtyard, a decent sprint backwards when the time came, and hopefully I wouldn’t run in the wrong direction.
We were prepared for this, I had left my webbing behind and I was now only wearing my undershirt, I had just five rounds in my rifle and my helmet lying faithfully by my side.
The dampness of the ground soon began to attack my body and as the chill began to bite into my skin, I found myself shivering like a stray dog caught in the rain.
I made a sudden, conscious attempt to stop my shivering as the adrenaline began to take over and put a stop to it. I listened again as the whispers were clearer, harsher as they cut through the wall of fog.
I brought my rifle up and into my body as I began rolling around trying to get into a better firing position. The whispers became more confident and before too long, just as it felt like they were going to trip over me, I could make clear, distinct German words.
Then, thankfully, I heard it.
Ting. Ting. Ting.
There it was. Lambert had heard it too. I tapped out the same signal on my helmet before placing it back on my skull and slowly peeling myself from the reluctance of the early morning dew. As I made it to my knees, I checked my rifle was in a good position before I did anything else.
Rifle now safely in my shoulder, I began creeping backwards, still hunched over in case the fog suddenly did lift and my torso became perfectly visible to the men in front of me. I picked up my pace for a moment, before stopping and listening carefully, trying to determine how far away the voices were.
They seemed far enough for me to turn and begin running normally, back in the direction I guessed the farm to be in.
Like a crudely drawn painting, the outlines of the courtyard slowly came into view, the farmhouse standing isolated and destitute in the middle of what would surely be an almighty storm. As I was welcomed back into the courtyard, two figures were kneeling either side of my entry, rifles raised to the fog and as I charged past them both, I felt both Red and Sergeant Lambert come off their knees to follow me.
My chest heaved up and down, phlegm dribbling down my chin as I focused on the only thing that I could at the moment, breathing. The three of us quickly reported what we had heard to the Captain before being sent back upstairs to our posts.
Pulling my webbing on felt like I had just regained the use of my arms and legs and I immediately snapped back into soldier mode, finding myself dutifully perched at one of the sandbagged windows once more.
“You run like one of them scared frogs Red,” called one voice from the room.
“Well, I didn’t have a white flag, so I didn’t quite complete the image.” The laughter petered out until it was nothing more than a few sporadic, nervous whimpers.
We all calmed ourselves as two figures glided from the fog, trying to sneak up on us like death as he waited to take his next victim. As one, we held our breath, as one, we put our fingers over our triggers.
Almost sensing our joint desire to pull the trigger, the Captain’s voice appeared from the gloom.
“Hold your fire chaps. Let the boys upstairs take care of this one.” It sounded almost like he was depending on the heavenly host to descend and take these enemy soldiers, especially as they were beginning to get so close I was sure that they would be able to see the whites of our eyes.
My whole body jolted as I felt the two individual rifle blasts erupt from upstairs and I watched as miraculously, the two figures who a moment ago had been confidently striding towards us, were now no longer standing, but lying prostrate on the ground somewhere behind the grassy mound.
Then, nothing. Nothing seemed to be happening, no one seemed to be moving. I felt like sighing out of relief but for some reason kept it to myself.
We all knew that that wasn’t the last we had seen of them.
17
Pushing my foot violently into the wall in front of me, I tried in earnest to stretch my foot out and rid myself of the crippling pain of cramp that I had been experiencing for a while now.
As I let out a half-sigh half-groan, a young private from the RASC appeared at the top of the stairs, accompanied by a large pewter jug that I assumed he had pinched from the milking shed.
“Coffee anyone?” he enquired with an air of innocent cheerfulness. He can’t have been older than eighteen, a really unlucky draw to end up here after what must have been a short career in the army so far. A few spots still clung to his face, refusing to leave and acting as a permanent reminder that not everyone had experienced the same war as I had.
He had a few freckles that seemed to underline his eyes and a tuft of dark brown hair rebelliously protruded from the rim of his battered helmet, which matched the chestnut brown colour of his eyes.
He seemed considerably cleaner than the rest of us, his uniform wasn’t soiled with dirt or stained with browned blood, but instead in a relatively good condition, almost as if he had only just been issued it. His newly washed face flushed red with embarrassment as the Captain flashed him a look of rebuke.
“Sorry Sir,” he timidly whispered, as he realised his own stupidity, turning back towards the stairs, probably to have a quick cry.
“Private?”
“Sir?” came the worried, shakin
g response.
“I haven’t had a cup of coffee in days. Do not go back down those stairs until the jug is bone dry. Do you understand?”
The young private almost beamed at the command and I was certain that there was a small bow of recognition at the close of the Captain’s sentence. Either way, the private dashed around the room, filling and re-filling cups till he was all out.
The coffee was a blessed relief from the dank, lukewarm water that had frequented my mouth since we had arrived on the farm. I was thankful for the water, it was keeping me alive, but it was rancid and was making me visit the toilet more often than a bee to its hive. The lumpy, warm mass congregated at the back of my throat, making it difficult to swallow it down, but I was nonetheless grateful to the young lad for the respite that it brought to all of us.
As the private made for the stairs, the Captain called out after him.
“Private? When was the last time you fired a rifle?”
“Not since I finished basic, Sir.”
“Grab one from downstairs and take up a position, would you? There’s a good lad.”
Minutes turned to hours and I thought about how much of my war I had already spent watching the landscape and waiting, sometimes praying for something to happen. I looked across at Evans who was sitting cross-legged, his rifle balanced loosely on the window ledge and his shoulder, looking increasingly tired.
I didn’t know too much about him, only what I had gleaned through tidbits of conversation that I had manged to squeeze out of him. He had given up a promising career as a cricketer to join the army, having slotted in the batting order at number three and often being the smallest in all the teams he played in. I almost found myself laughing at him as his blonde hair gently moved around in the breeze that was coming through the open window.
His brother was somewhere else in France, I had remembered that much, a Sergeant in a regiment that I couldn’t quite recall now, but I wondered whether it was for his brother that he had shed those tears yesterday, or if it was for his own hopeless state. His overgrown hair began to move more violently as the breeze picked up into a gust, as I recalled that Charlie’s brother had been stationed all over the world before being recalled into the BEF and being sent to France.
I had to look away from him before I got too attached to this young man who, outside of the uniform, could quite easily have been a good friend of mine, or even a county cricket teammate.
The choking fog had lifted slightly due, in no small part, to the ever-strengthening wind that began to sweep across the fields. Remnants of it still lingered, not quite lightweight enough for the wind to carry it away, but it had dissipated enough for me to be able to see the outhouse.
Another hour or two passed quite uneventfully and I was on the verge of succumbing to the drowsiness of monotony, when I just about made out three, dulled thuds that emanated from somewhere behind the curtain of lingering fog.
All the bodies at the window suddenly jerked up, just in time to watch as the three mortar rounds buried themselves deep into the soil around the grass embankment. The whole house shook but, vitally, we were all still alive as the rounds had fallen short of our position. We waited for another volley of rounds, each and every one of us widening our shattered eyes to see if we could make out any more movement.
A few more minutes passed and for a moment, I thought that maybe the Germans had given up. The house began to creak and the fog that wafted around fused with the dust and the cordite from the explosives. Suddenly, three more, hollow thuds.
They each landed closer this time, probably just in front of the grassy mound but I didn’t have time to check as more began to rain down all around us, this time cracking into the cobbled stone of the courtyard. The soft pitter patter of disturbed earth was soon substituted for the click-clack of lethal shards of stone floating back down towards earth.
I, as well as the rest of us, tucked ourselves tightly into a ball and chins were pushed firmly into chests. The mortars seemed to advance on our position until if felt as if the rounds were falling directly onto my head, the crescendo was that great. The glass panes in the windows, who had held onto their frames so valiantly, finally gave way to a single blast, spraying fine, crystallised daggers across the room.
The glass chimed sweetly as it glided to the ground, like when a handful of pennies are released to the floor, and they scattered themselves as far around the room as possible.
There was a brief moment of silence after that glass-shattering round had hit the ground, and I watched as everyone seemed to move in a much slower manner than was normal. My brain seemed to catch up with the world around me, just as an agonising scream pierced the eerie silence.
The soldier began crying, bellowing, wanting desperately to grip his face in pain, but great shards of glass that had punctured both his hands were preventing him from doing so. His uniform, like the rest of his body was ripped and torn, already beginning to fray as he writhed around in agony, looking like a merciless tiger had just delivered one of his finest slashes to the poor man.
His face had become a pure maze of entangled blood and glass, forming rivers of scarlet to trickle down his face and dribble from the ends of the glass. The pool of congregating blood on the floor was denied an opportunity to continue filling up as the man was dragged screaming from the window, accompanied by a futile attempt at reassurance.
The thuds of their retreating footsteps were replaced immediately by the rattle of German machine guns. Using the cover generated by the fog and mortars, they had managed to advance within MG range of our positions. To me, this was a positive, they had no armour and they weren’t just going to blow this farmhouse up and move on. They wanted it for themselves, they needed the building intact if they could get it.
Bullets soon began whipping and cracking into the brickwork around our window frames, they were getting closer and this war was beginning to get real for me now.
“Hold fire! Hold your fire! Wait!”
The two machine guns set up in the field continued to pour rounds on us like some sort of horizontal rain, while I could make out figures advancing closely behind them as they launched their attack.
Just as the figures passed by their flanking machine gunners, three shots rang out from upstairs, followed closely by one just out of sync with the others. The machine guns fell silent.
“Pour it on them! Mad minute the lot of you! Do not stop!” The Captain seemed completely incensed that the enemy would have the audacity to try and overrun us seeming to take it as some sort of personal attack that they were now giving it a go.
Resting the barrel of my rifle on the sandbagged window ledge, I firmly pushed the butt into my shoulder, adjusting it until it sat comfortably in the fleshiest part of my joint. By now, rounds were fizzing out of the end of everyone’s rifles, on both sides, one shot continuously after the other ringing in my ears each time.
I took a few breaths to try and calm myself, there was no point in trying to fire while I was all excitable, they would be sent whizzing right over the tops of the enemy’s heads and would be no good in trying to keep myself alive.
I moved my middle finger over towards the trigger slowly, simultaneously rocking the safety forwards with my index finger and shut my left eye.
It felt as though someone had just taken a sledgehammer to my shoulder as the first round shot from the end of my rifle. I shrugged it off and pulling the bolt back, began repeating the motions again. A never-ending stream of faceless, shadowy figures continued to pour from the fog, now a more concentrated mix of cordite from all the mortar rounds.
It took me three more rounds before I watched a red mist spray up from behind the man I had just hit. He crumpled to the floor in a heap and ceased to move. I had got him. I had put my first German away.
What seemed like a momentous point in my life was normal for everyone else here, as they repeatedly sent rounds ripping into the flesh of the Germans who refused to back down. I watched as some fell to the
ir knees before landing face down, others wriggled around on the floor and others still seemed to shoot backwards as their charge was brutally interrupted.
“Thy Kingdom come…”
Bang.
“…on earth as it is in heaven…”
Bang.
I was like a machine now, I had no care for the lives that I was taking, but I found myself uttering the Lord’s prayer, something that I was surprised at. I had not uttered its words since I was a boy but, as I found myself playing God by pulling these men from the world, it was the only thing that seemed to be popping into my head.
I made no conscious attempt to stop it, no obvious efforts to turn my volume down but instead continued to mutter its words until I was out of rounds and had to reload.
Almost as quickly as it started, the German stream seemed to stop. No more shadowy figures emerged. The odd rifle shot echoed out across the field as the boys upstairs cleaned up the last few, crawling stragglers.
“Check your rounds boys. They’ll be back soon enough.”
The fog soon lifted completely as the cordite retreated and was carried away by the wind, revealing the scale of the utter devastation that we had caused. Bodies were strewn all over the field, the grassy mound now stained red. Some seemed to have limbs missing while others seemed to look untouched. They all had one thing in common though, they would all still be lying there in the morning.
I could make out the figure of the first German I had managed to put away. He was face down in the ground, looking more like he had passed out than passed away. I wondered what would happen to his body and whether his own army cared enough about him to take him away and give him a proper burial, before my thoughts overtook me as I began guessing how long it would take for a body to fully decompose out in the open.
Either way, in the morning, he would still be there.
As I looked across at Red, giving me a thumbs up and a grin, a flash streaked across my eyes, like someone’s watch face had caught the glinting sun. But it came from out over the field. I pushed my rifle out of the window once again and began scanning everything from the trees to the outhouse and then from the outhouse, to the grass mound, but I could see nothing.
