As we’d been doing a lot of things around the Armistice, Victoria Cross Winners and the 100 Year anniversary of the end of World War 1, I had an idea for a story. Once I’d finished it I asked Jott to create an illustration for it, we hope you enjoy it.
“So you ask me about the war, Hmmmm? You think you would like to fight for your country? You believe you would win honour in glorious battle?”
My 13-year-old Grandson and his friends had been playing their war game. Some were playing the English, some were playing the Germans. I had been drawn to intervene when I heard raised voices instead of mimicked gunfire. Sure enough, one boy claimed to have shot another who in turn insisted that the shot had missed. I enjoyed the irony of how the guns they had been playing with had been discarded and the pair were rolling around brawling with their fists.
I am on old-man now, but where my muscles may have faded my voice still carries authority. In my best Sergeant’s tone I shouted “Soldiers! Stand to Attention!”
The response was remarkable. Nine boys instantly spun on heels and faced me, arms held dutifully by their sides. The brawlers pulled themselves apart, recovered their carved wooden rifles and joined their comrades. I performed a parade ground inspection, correcting posture and straightening shirt collars before I put the boys at their ease. When the heat of temper had dimmed I spoke to the troop.
“You should never fight each other. There are foes enough outside this village and outside this country for all of you. You don’t have to like each other, but you must always work together or you are doing your enemies work for you.”
“Did you hate your enemy Pops?” My grandson always asked the best questions, or perhaps I gave his questions the most consideration. I paused to think for a moment before I replied.
“Sometimes I did. Sometimes I pitied them.”
“Would you tell us Pops?”
What can I say? I am a vain old man. I have wisdom to share and here I was blessed with eleven eager listeners. I pulled my pipe and tobacco and sat back on the smooth capping-stone of my garden wall. The boys formed a semi-circle around me, squatting cross-legged on the grass. I looked at the faces of these boys and I was briefly startled. I had seen faces not much older than theirs in oversized helmets holding real guns. I thought back to my war. It was easier now. The shells did not ring so loud now, the smells of death and decay no longer as vivid. The raw memories had faded in the way that coloured silks fade in the sunlight.
I put fire to my tobacco before I started to speak. I would talk to them of war.
“I was in real trouble. In the smoke, panic and confusion I had become separated from my squad. We had endured what felt like an endless barrage of artillery fire before the enemy charge. God they were relentless. They came in wave after wave – our guns were overheating and jamming, I was choking on the smell of cordite and the leaking bowels of the dead.
I could see my chums, I saw our Sergeant bellowing orders – but all I could hear was a high, steady whistle in my ears. I watched in brief fascination at the silent snarling of an attacker, but I did not concern myself with the words he was screaming. When I shot him his snarling mouth became a serene ‘O’ of wonder as he dropped dead into the mud.
I sensed a change to my right, the flash of my chums’ gunfire in my peripheral vision was gone. As I turned I began to see why – we were breached. Our enemy were advancing through the trench towards us. I was briefly blinded as my face was showered with a hot mist of a friend’s blood. I was already wiping my face before the poor sod knew he was dead. I raised my rifle, took aim and was about to fire when half of the man in front of me hit me in the chest and threw me backwards.
I lay there, dazed and covered in every fibre, sinew and fluid that makes up a man – breathing raggedly with whistling ears and bedazzled eyes. For a moment I was about to curse whoever it was throwing pebbles at me, I swatted them away and felt the air move above me. They weren’t pebbles. The bastards were shooting at me, these near misses were firing specks of earth like shrapnel.
An instinct of self-preservation gave me the strength to buck the half corpse off myself and I scrambled to my feet. I had the presence of mind to look for my weapon as my feet moved – too far back, I dropped it when I was hit. I ran, diving as I reach Dead Man’s Corner – more dirt exploded where a soldier thought my head would be.
I am at full speed, crouched as I run Sniper’s Alley, but when I look up my heart sinks – I see the unguarded backs of uniforms like mine. The enemy have breached on this side too! Bugger – the only way out now is up. I yell to my countrymen ‘Get out – they are behind you!’ They do not respond.
The rear of the trench is sheer – it has taken heavy fire.
No ladders.
No retreat.
No choice.
No-Man’s Land.
I scramble blindly up the bank. There is no point looking behind me, death walks there, if it is my time he will take me – whether I see him do it or not. I clear the trench and crouch low, the artillery barrage has cut through the barbed wire away to my left – good, it is still moving away from my pursuers in the trench.
Ears whistling I make for the gap, I want to find a weapon but I dare not lower my eyes. Where am I to go? There is nothing. No walls, no trees – all I see is a purgatory of mud and death. I can hear nothing but the cursed whistling! My peripheral vision picks up muzzle flare and motion – there is fighting everywhere around me.
Sounds begin to punctuate the whistling in my ears:
”Pzzsffft.” Bullets fizz past.
“Thwick.” Divots of earth explode around me.
I dive to the ground for cover. I feel the fingers from another hand grab mine in the mud. The scream from my own throat sounds far off. As I wrench my hand free from my unseen assailant, I watch in macabre amusement as the hand that had briefly touched mine flies finger over stump through the air. The body that once wielded it is nowhere to be seen.
I am crouched like a dog watching this hand spiral away when I notice something else is flying through the air. The arcs of the hand and this ball almost cross over each other – like a juggler’s trick. I squat in the mud, mesmerised. I have so often wished I could have seen my own face, was I smiling like an imbecile? Did my head tilt like a puppy? How long did it take for horror and terror to snap me from my stupor when I saw the bomb bounce towards me?
Adrenaline fuelled my limbs and I sprang to my feet. I felt the resistance as my left foot pressed against the ground, then my right, then a flash and heat. All of the air was forced from me like a bellows. The world started to spin under me; I saw mud, sky and mud again – I was flying. My mind was filled with laughter and a single thought – “I’m the hand – I’m flying like the hand!”
I felt nothing of the impact as I landed, like a blanket being thrown over a fresh made bed, I found myself draped over the mud. I thought of mud, of earth. I felt the ground draw me down and I surrendered to its embrace. I have had enough of war, of fear, of hate and shame. Relief. Sweet blessed relief awaits me in my bed, my grave. I gave myself over to death.
But I did not die. I gradually woke, cold and wet through. Of itself that was not unusual. Cold and wet were a way of life in the trench. It took a few seconds before I realised that this was different. I was upside down and head first in the mud. I remembered how I had landed here. Mercifully my instinct for danger outweighed my instinct to start awake. I kept my breathing shallow while I swivelled my eyes around trying to identify forms in the darkness.
I was on the slope of a deep crater. The base and sides were strewn with the usual detritus of No-Man’s Land. I saw boots and helmets – even without checking I knew that at least some of them would still be occupied by their former owners’ limbs. I counted 6 other bodies, 4 in poses that the living could not achieve.
I was about to move when one of the other two bodies rubbed its hands together. My life had been spared by whatever creeping thing had startled him. I could not see if he was friend or foe – but he was armed, well he had a bayonet topped rifle by his right knee. I relaxed back into my rigour and waited – watching my companion for any indication of his allegiance.
He barely moved, I knew I had been lucky to see him. Occasionally he would turn his head at some noise. He watched the world around him. I watched the watcher. I pissed myself. No room for misguided pride in this hole. No fear of the smell rising above the stench of decay. For a moment I savoured the warmth that rose up my belly, I thought it queer how the warmth travelled up my body – opposite to drinking soup when the heat travels down.
There was a ‘Zuuummmfff’ followed by a hiss as a flare slowly burned its way to earth casting a hellish red glow. The light flickered like Lucifer’s lantern and I swear I felt the Devil’s breath on my neck as my companion’s helmet was outlined in the glow. Bastard.
I heard the volleys of sniper fire and saw the tracer shots criss-cross over our heads like a deadly meteor shower. My enemy turned to his left, and laid his head along the edge of the fox-hole as he peeped through one eye across No-Man’s Land. The flare fell to earth and my enemy returned to his vigil. I watched him.
I formed a plan. I knew I would have to be ready so I began to gradually work blood back into my fingers and toes. I clenched and relaxed my thighs, my calf muscles and my arms in turn – I waited. Thankfully people are predictable.
It felt like an age until the next flare went up. I was ready. Once again the rifles rang out from both sides and again my foe leaned to look out of the fox-hole. I dragged myself slithering down into the bowl of the crater and across towards the watcher. My hand was still about 2 feet away from the strap of his weapon when he turned and saw me.
He was a mere boy, wide eyed and terrified. In his shock he half kicked and scrambled to be away from me, knocking his rifle towards me as he did. He soon realised his mistake – but not soon enough. I grabbed the strap and sprang up to my knees, adjusting my grip as I rose. I braced myself, expecting him to lunge for his gun but he merely fell backwards onto the mud. In the last glow of the flare I saw that the fear had left his face – his spirit too had gone. Like a rabbit in the jaws of a hound, he had surrendered to death before the pain of dying could strike him.
Three years in trenches had cured me of compassion. During training, behind the bravado, many of us had wondered if we would actually be able to take another life. Would we be able to pull the trigger? Our sergeant had told us, “When you shoot, remember that you are shooting the uniform. Don’t think about the man inside it.” In my first weeks at the front I had seen dozens of my friends killed. It did not take long until I forgot the sergeant’s words. I no longer cared about shooting uniforms, I wanted to kill the bastards that were killing my friends.
But that night, when I raised the rifle and aimed at his chest it was my hands that turned to stone instead of my heart. I could not pull the trigger. I could not tell how long we stayed frozen in that scene, but the boy was the first to move. He blinked a few times before he slowly raised his hands in surrender.”
I paused to work at my pipe and my audience seized their moment to ask questions.
“Why didn’t you kill him?”
“Did he speak to you?”
“Was he your prisoner?”
“Did you not know how to shoot his gun?”
“What was his name?”
The questions overlapped each other, an enfilade of enquiries.
Puffing again on my pipe I continued;
“He had no weapons and he was afraid so I didn’t have to kill him. Remember how I told you that I didn’t know which side was which? Well that had not changed. I wanted to find out if he knew which side his army were firing from.
I gestured for him to lower his hands and I lowered the gun, sitting like you are now, cross-legged with the rifle across my lap. When the boy had started to breathe again I asked him his name, but he looked at me blankly. I pointed to my shoulder then to my helmet then pointed to the trenches either side of us, trying to ask him if he knew who held which trench. Finally I saw he understood me. He pointed to his own helmet and then towards the trench on his side of the hole, but then crumpled his lip, waved his hands and shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘I’m not sure.”
I think in that moment we reached an understanding, a temporary truce. We would both try to find our way back to our lines that night and then try to kill each other another day. We spent a few minutes checking the bodies in the trench. My companion froze when he turned over one of the corpses. I thought it might have been a friend of his, but when I followed his gaze I saw he had revealed another rifle right at his feet. I was horrified! I had foolishly left my weapon a few feet away in my eagerness to search the dead. In a reversal of fortune I slowly raised my hands in surrender. He picked up the rifle, wiped the heaviest mud from the firing mechanism and placed it back near his original hiding place. He smiled at me and resumed his search.
We found water, some dried biscuits and best of all some only slightly damp cigarettes. I showed him how to use a helmet to shutter the glare of flames while we smoked. While we ate and drank he produced a watch on a chain from his tunic. 11 O’clock. Through more gestures we managed to formulate a plan. We each chose a side of the fox-hole to watch out for night patrols in No-Man’s Land and to try to identify where we would each find our own comrades.
Each time a flare went up we tried to identify something in the surrounding area, but each time we know that we were surrounded by eagle-eyed snipers just waiting to pick off anything that moved.
As the minutes turned to hours we began to hear the noises of the night. In the trenches they are nothing – barely a distraction. But out here, every little noise fills your body with tension. You hear the crawling and scurrying things. In the dark your imagination can turn the paws of a rat into the claws of a tiger. You hear the moans of the wounded. You hear the laughter echoing from the trenches – it is such a torment, for your enemy’s laughs sound just like your own!
Over time you gain confidence in the quiet, you believe that everybody is asleep. You are about to take a chance to look around you then you hear the worst sound in the dead of night: the single gun-shot. You wait for the bite of the bullet, despite the logic that if the bullet was destined for you, you would be dead before ever hearing the shot.
The clock restarts and you edge closer to the top of the hole before another shot sends you scurrying for cover again.
The next few hours felt like days, but gradually the frequency of the flares diminished and the gaps between gunshots increased. The sounds of talking, laughter and coughs faded away and my companion and I felt more confident in looking for landmarks. While the lack of activity made our task safer, it also made it impossible to find anything to distinguish between the sides.
My orphaned companion and I shared another couple of cigarettes. I had just drawn a deep drag when he tossed a pretend coin in the air and gave me a thumbs-up before pointing to the trenches on my side of the pit. I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t hold the smoke, I laughed and began to cough and splutter loudly. But rather than curse at me, my companion laughed too. We fell back as we tried to gather our composure and suddenly the whole world seemed to wake up to stop our fun, the sky was lit with flares, 5, 7, 10 or more. There were extended volleys of gunfire criss-crossing above us. Soon enough the machine-guns added their staccato rhythms to the fight. And all the while we rolled and laughed at the joke and the absurdity of it all. Like I said earlier, we all laugh the same!
But just as our laughter faded, the gunfire petered out too. Our final, isolated chuckles being mirrored by occasional and disjointed sniper-fire. My companion looked at his watch and held up three fingers to me. If there was any hope of finding our way back it would have to be in the next hour or so. Once the sun began to lighten the sky we would be stuck again.
We resumed our vigil as calm once again returned. About 30 minutes later I thought I heard something. When I looked at my companion I saw that he had noticed it too. We listened again and were soon certain. Somebody was crawling nearby. A minute later we were certain it was more than one. Either a patrol or a stretcher party recovering wounded – but on who’s side? Those next few seconds were perhaps the longest of this whole ordeal – the longest of my life. We waited for a voice, a word we recognised. When it finally came I almost wept. It was not my language, my enemies had reached us first.
My companion and I looked at each other in the dark. We had both known it might come to this. He smiled sadly at me and paused for a moment, I sensed he was searching for options. I have to tell you I don’t know that I would have hesitated had the roles been reversed. But finally he hissed through his teeth and spoke a short sentence.
There was a pause, a terse reply and a few single words exchanged before we heard the sounds of crawling getting closer. My heart sank as the silhouettes of two fresh enemy helmets appeared at the rim of the trench before one of them slid in beside my companion. I froze as I waited for the kill shot that must surely come – I would never have tried to take a prisoner in this situation. But as I watched I could see that my companion was working to get his men out of the pit. I guessed he reassured his rescuers that everybody in here was dead, that they had no valuables worth taking and that they needed to be on their way. It might have been seconds or minutes, I will never know, but the two new arrivals cleared the fox-hole and began to crawl away. My companion was quickly on their heels. He never looked back, we never said goodbye, but as he cleared the top of the pit he pointed and gestured twice to indicate which side he was going towards before giving a final thumbs up. Then he was gone.
I waited for about twenty minutes before I made my way back and found familiar men waiting for me. On that night we both had chances to kill each other, but in that pit we ceased to be enemies. We were just two men, laughing at the stupidity of war.”
“Did you ever see him again Pops? Did you ever see Tommy?” My Grandson enquired.
“No Hans, I never did. And his name was not Tommy. He was a Tommy – an English soldier.”
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