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  Slaughter Fields

  Trench Raiders Book 1

  Thomas Wood

  Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Wood

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Thomas Wood

  Visit my website at www.ThomasWoodBooks.com

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  First Printing: January 2019

  by

  BoleynBennett Publishing

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  1

  The first couple of stumbling steps that I had taken out into No Man’s Land had been relatively easy. There had been no shell holes or machine gun fire that had tried to trip me up with their lethal darts, but just a deadly silence as the men of the 2nd Battalion uneasily crept their way over the top of the parapet.

  Artillery had been pulverising this small little field for the best part of half an hour, so what had once been a lovely, furrowed and well-maintained farmer’s field, was nothing more than a barren wasteland, stripped of anything that made it seem like it was planet earth.

  Apart from the battalion as they inched closer to the Germans, nothing seemed to move; the ground had settled now, content not to be thrown around like a child’s toy and no birds seemed to frequent the air, that was filled with acrid smoke and horrid fumes.

  But the silence was quickly smashed to pieces by a tumultuous pandemonium, as if the world was trying to make up for the few seconds of silence that we had been granted half a second before. It all seemed to engulf me, seizing my body and everything within it, so much so that I could barely string a cohesive thought together as I stood there.

  I looked across at the desolate and churned up mud that we would have to advance across, wondering how it was even remotely possible for anything to live in this kind of a world. Even the hardiest of creatures would struggle to survive out here, a meagre worm would need to fight to take sustenance from the contaminated soil and would more than likely be cut down by a raking machine gun himself.

  In the distance, as our heads had gradually risen up and over the top of the sandbagged parapet, the faint booms of the retorting German artillery were just about audible, as if someone was gently tapping their fist into the palm of their hand, continuously.

  I had expected to hear maybe four or five thumps in retaliation to our artillery, but instead the faint punches on the horizon continued to resound, right until the point when they were superseded by a far more arrogant and eminent crash, as the first of the rounds began to unsettle the disgruntled earth once again.

  A curtain of dirt was immediately thrown up ahead of me, in the same way that a spurt of water would erupt from a garden hose that had been kinked for a long time, except the spurts of dirt continued for as far as I could see, both left and right. As soon as one cloud of dirt and dust pattered its way back to earth, another would take its place, as if each one had been given very specific instructions on where to land and when.

  The shells that began to pulverise the ground before us, seemed to act as some sort of a starter gun, as whistles began to shriek out across the fog, the bellows of terrified teenagers as they walked towards the enemy replying to the shrill screams.

  “Come on then!” screamed one man, as he threw a leather football over the top of the trench, proceeding to drop kick it as far as he could, into the cloud of smoke that had appeared all around us.

  The artillery shells knew of no let up, and continued to rain down on us heavier than a tonne of marbles being dropped from the sky.

  “Let’s go, boys!” hollered Lieutenant Fairweather, a young but driven individual, who had taken command of five platoon shortly before the rest of them had shipped out for France.

  Screams of confidence suddenly erupted from everyone’s lips, including mine, as we began to march along No Man’s Land, as one. I felt immortal as I stood side by side to two of my comrades, weapons in hands and ready to see how much damage our artillery had done just minutes before. We were sure that the enemy would be completely decimated, as there was no way that anyone could have lived through the sheer hell that we had put them through, courtesy of the Royal Field Artillery and their eighteen pounders.

  Without warning, some screams were simply shut off, as if the man who bellowed them had switched his own voice box off, in amongst all the excitement. It did not take me too long to work out why, as one shell suddenly spewed molten lead and bits of dirt in every possible direction, just over to my left, and I watched as one man’s lower leg was ripped from his body, as he was sent cartwheeling through the air.

  Every fibre of my being wanted to run over and help the man, who now lay screaming in a pitiful agony, as he clutched at the bloody stump that was now his leg.

  “Don’t think about it, Ellis! Keep moving!” I continued to stagger forward, my head turned backwards towards the screaming figure, as the gruff, curt tones of Sergeant Needs began to filter through into my mind.

  “He’s gone. Forget him.”

  He seemed so at home shouting that I found it surprising that he hadn’t ruptured his vocal chords by now, his deep booming tones fighting off the competition that the artillery had to offer.

  The continuous field of churned up and slightly sodden mud began to clump to the bottom of my boots and I could already feel the first few signs of leakage in my socks, as the coldness of the early morning began to bite gently at the very tips of my toes.

  “Okay then lads, keep your heads.”

  We began to advance into the curtain of artillery that had been put on as a welcome for us, the confusion and chaos ratcheting up ten-fold as we did so.

  As I marched ever closer to what I presumed would be my grisly end, I moved my right hand upwards until it just brushed over the breast pocket of my tunic. I rubbed it around the outline of the brassy object that was perched in there and tried to take as much comfort out of it as I possibly could.

  I was not superstitious or ritualistic, but it did give me a boost, a confidence. And, failing that, I was hoping that it might protect the vital organ that was quivering behind it.

  The screams of men were now as continuous and harrowing as the sound of the bullying artillery, as I watched body after body being thrown through the air, some with limbs cruelly severed from their housings, before they slumped to the ground.

  I slid down into a shell hole, to try and catch my breath, drenching myself in a bath tub of rancid water as I did so. Trying to escape from the freezing clutches of the water, I scrabbled up the opposite side of the hole; the wet, compact mud, making it ever so slightly easier to do so than if it was bone dry.

  I peeked out over the top of the hole, waiting for the next shell to burst, which took less than half a second. Yanking myself from the hole, I charged towards the falling mud, reasoning that two shells wouldn’t hit the same place twice, no matter how hard it tried.

  I knew that my thoughts were confused and childlike, but I wanted to stay alive and, right
now, this seemed like my best possible prospect of doing so.

  The men that had stood either side of me, the rest of five platoon, were nowhere to be seen, and I suddenly had the horrible feeling that I was out here all on my own, the rest of them being ordered to retreat without my knowledge. But, through the clouds of smoke, I could make out figures and supposed that I had been left behind, a prospect even worse than being out in No Man’s Land on one’s own.

  Everything that could be on fire was; from the fallen and rotten branches that had been blasted from their roots weeks ago, to a small stone structure, that I assumed was once some sort of house, that seemed impossible to be ablaze.

  Men trod over flames and bodies, as if they were merely stepping over a small twig on a Sunday afternoon stroll, as they defiantly strode towards the enemy trenches.

  I jogged to catch up with the marching figures, the heavy weight of my kit throwing itself up and down and forcing me to slow my pace up to a more leisurely degree.

  I got a coating of dirt splashed across my face as another shell exploded somewhere in front of me, blinding me for a moment as my body tried desperately to get rid of the flecks of dirt that sat on my eyeballs.

  When I was able to see again, the little flashing lights that accompanied the rattling I had heard half a second before, began to light up all around me, as the sickening sound of bullets tearing through flesh and smacking into bones could be heard above the din of artillery.

  Men began to fall in a higher volume all of a sudden, as the invisible guns, obscured by the rolling cloud of smoke and dust, began to blindly fire in front of them, hoping to hit one of the oncoming silhouettes.

  I wanted to be able to switch my hearing off for a moment, the never-ending pounding from the artillery a blaring backdrop to the noise of raking gunfire, and awful screeches of dying men. The uproar was orchestral, each sound wishing to compliment the other in the most grotesque way possible, the assault on my eardrums never letting up for a second.

  For a moment, it felt as though my very brain was being tormented, shaken around violently by the pandemonium and the tremoring earthquake that rattled away at the ground that I stood on.

  Somehow, my feet continued to pull me forwards, not wanting me to be left behind and thought of as a coward. I had managed to catch up with the rest of the platoon, just as I saw Roger Nash let three bullets pass straight through his body, as if he was a thin sheet of paper. The bullets carried on as if they had struck nothing, as Nash simply sunk to his knees, falling face down into the mud, splattering muck and blood all over his personal territory.

  I watched as the Germans advertised their whereabouts, tiny flickers of lights as round after round was thrown our way, the distinctive rat-tat-tat of a machine gun firing somewhere over to my left.

  The machine gun seemed to be aiming low, as I watched men suddenly drop to the ground, clutching away at their shin bones, now fully exposed thanks to the small round that had ripped away at their flesh.

  Bullets began thwacking into the ground on my right, smaller explosions of dirt than the artillery that I had come to expect, signifying to me the arrival of bullets. The line of mini explosions continued, charging its way towards me, making me instinctively drop to the ground with a splash, coating myself head to toe in a makeup of mud and blood.

  The bullets continued raking their way towards me, as I begin to crawl to the nearest shell hole that I could get to, without turning back. Using my rifle as a gripping stick, I dug it into the loose ground and dragged myself along, falling headfirst into another pool of water at the bottom.

  I bounced off something as I closed my eyes and braced for the cold water to submerge me and, as I opened my eyes, I recognised the bloke from the same company as me, although I could not remember his name.

  Half of his neck seemed to be missing, as he sat, almost upright at the bottom of the hole, to the point where it could be mistaken that he was taking a nap in amongst all the chaos.

  His eyes had already glazed over and had started to sink back into his skull, which is how I left him, scrabbling my way to the top, not wanting to be anywhere near anything that might bring me some bad luck.

  I froze at the top of the shell hole, as I realised that I was about to vomit. I wanted to carry on moving forward, to be with the rest of the men, but something was stopping me from doing so.

  The clumpy mud continued to be thrown in all directions by the artillery that still threatened to rip me into pieces, as the machine guns continued to rain horizontal terror upon us; men’s chests being ripped open and skulls being shattered.

  “Why have you stopped!” screamed a voice from just behind me, sounding as if he was straining so much that his throat was red-raw.

  “Keep moving! That way!” he bellowed, as he took a hold of my webbing and tugged me forwards, before he himself stopped.

  His head lolled from side to side for a moment, as if he had lost the ability to hold his head upright and was struggling to stay awake.

  As I looked over at him, I realised that it was Corporal Milne, one of the platoon section NCOs, who had found me rooted to the spot, refusing to go on.

  I could make out his short, sharp breaths even above the din, as if he wanted deeper, longer breaths but was interrupted by some sort of obstruction in his windpipe.

  As he dropped to the ground, I saw that he did; a twisted, jagged piece of shell sticking almost proudly from the side of his neck. He fell to his knees at first, and as I tried to grab him, to stop him from falling face down into the dirt, I realised that there was an equally large chunk of shrapnel embedded in his lower chest, right where I estimated his lungs would be.

  I released my rifle, letting it fall to the ground with a splash, as I gently laid the corporal out on his back, leaving him to die in a slightly more comfortable position than if he was to drown himself in amongst the mud.

  My breath began to fail, and my feet still refused to work. I didn’t want to run towards that cloud of smoke, where the fires were raging, and bullets were flying. It was my natural instinct to jump into the bottom of a shell hole, clutch my rifle and curl up into a ball. I wanted this all to be over.

  I knew, even in my confused and helpless state, that if I was to do that, I would end up dead anyway, the victim of a firing squad at dawn the next morning. I had to keep moving.

  I began to search for someone I knew, a figure that I could follow and possibly hide behind, but I could see no one.

  I forced myself to begin charging forwards, in the hope that I would see someone that I vaguely recognised, and give me some sort of assurance.

  Suddenly, I caught a flash of some stripes. I fixed my eyes upon him, and lifted my heavy, sticky boots high up into my chest, running over towards him.

  As I got closer, I could just about hear his voice, as he guided everyone in.

  “Etwell, get up to that cart there. Hawling cover his run!”

  The sucking glooping noise that I made as I ran over to him, as he perched behind half an old stone wall, must have been louder than the crescendo of flying bullets and artillery shells, as he turned to witness the pathetic, lanky private stumble his way towards him.

  “Ellis! Over here! Into me, now!”

  I wasn’t going to take any chances, Sergeant Needs was one of the most experienced soldiers in the whole of the army, he was like a father to me. I was going to do exactly what he told me to do.

  2

  “Lads, that crater there. That’s where we’re going. See it?”

  The sergeant was calm. His short, to the point instructions were met with agreements from the few men that he now had under his command.

  “Ferguson, Shaw, Mackie. Give us some cover while we make it over. Then come to us. Got it?”

  There were a few more mutters of agreement, that would have been like shouts had it not been for the pounding of shells and machine guns that were incessant in their delivery of death.

  “Ready? Then let’s go.”


  The three men poked their heads bravely over the top of the wall, as they fired a volley of bullets back in the direction of the Germans, probably the first taste of incoming rifle fire that they had had all morning.

  As soon as the first round kicked out of their weapons, Sergeant Needs was already on his feet, screaming.

  “Follow me! Let’s go! Move!”

  We all did as we were told, following quite literally in his footsteps, convinced that the experience and knowledge of the battlefield that he possessed, would somehow protect him and us in our advance.

  The man in front of me suddenly spun round, as a round caught him in the top of his shoulder, sending him crashing to the ground, just missing me by inches.

  “Leave him! Don’t stop!” came the voice from behind me, as we mercilessly left the man to scream out for his mother in a concoction of sodden earth and his own blood.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, forcing myself to forget about him in a cold, clinical manner. It was against my nature, but these men had all been over the top before, they knew what to do to give themselves a small chance at survival, and I intended to try my hardest to make it through.

  Bullets fizzed and cracked into the ground all around me, some whispering into my ear as they flew past, as they desperately tried to cut down the group of men that had suddenly emerged from the flames and smoke.

  I watched as the Sergeant seemed to leap high into the air, as if he was trying to vault the entire crater, before he came smashing down on the far side of it, expertly avoiding the pit of water that the rest of us all splashed into.

  “Jam tins! Jam tins! Who’s got them!” I was in awe of Needs as he continued to take complete control of the situation, managing to face up to the reality that he could be dead in a few moments, apparently putting it to the back of his mind.