As If They Were My Own Read online

  What was it? Fear? Cowardice?

  Again, I felt the mortar before I heard or saw it. It sent such a pulsating, vibrating feeling through the core of my body that I felt like I was going to vomit. The dust began to settle all around me, and as I lifted my head up, the browned, monotone, drying leaves, were now stained with a liquid, a scarlet liquid.

  Knight was lying on the floor, clutching at his neck, his hands covering this wound, but a large shard of wood was protruding from his cheek. He groaned and shouted in agony while he tried desperately to speak, but the giant splinter had shot through his cheek, and pinned itself to his tongue.

  I splashed around in the pool of blood as I fought with him to get to the wound, to treat him, but he just wouldn’t let me. I begged him with my eyes more than anything, just to let me do what I could for him, but he didn’t understand. That’s the problem with a dying man, they become irrational, they don’t understand the simplest of instructions, and, right now, that was Arthur’s problem.

  “Here they come,” whispered Carter, as Knight began to gargle, great bubbles of blood began forming at the back of his throat.

  “It’s all yours, Sid,” I hissed back at him. That was all we needed now.

  The Germans had begun closing in.

  3

  “We’re alright boys…we’re okay, watch your fire…make ‘em count,” Sid was brilliant at his job. He may have been hated by some, but by the vast majority, he was adored. He had been a Corporal for around eighteen months now, but the last few days had been the making of him, we’d found his strength.

  He was fantastic at calming a situation down. Here we were, somewhere in Northern France, making for the coast, surrounded by enemy soldiers, one of us severely wounded, and yet, his dulcet, calming tones, had such a soothing effect on all of us, that we could almost forget where we were.

  It was impossible though, the warm blood that had begun to seep through my fingers was staining my skin. Arthur was losing pint after pint of blood, every second a new hole opening up somewhere for it to leak out of. I was pushing down hard on his neck, my fingers straddling the large chunk of wood now embedded in it. I was forcing my hand down on him so hard that, for a moment, I wondered if it was me causing the choking sound in the back of his throat. A slight relief of pressure however, confirmed I was doing the right thing, and the compression on his neck was returned to normal.

  My hands were filthy and I almost felt guilty about what would be entering young Arthur Knight’s body as I held him pinned to the ground. I had jumped in rancid irrigation ditches, used the palms of my hand to clean myself after squatting in a bush, I had eaten off them. I repulsed even myself as I thought back to what I had done to myself, what I had put my body through over the last few days. All so that I could retain a little bit of pride, and not be one of those who flicks a white handkerchief above his head. I would not do that.

  I looked down at Arthur, I had taken him under my wing considerably since meeting him. I knew that he was capable and willing, but his head was all over the place, which for a young eighteen-year-old, was fair enough. He had seen death on a scale that no one should ever have to see, never mind someone so young who may live for another fifty odd years carrying that kind of memory along with them.

  When people talk of memories, we instinctively think of happy ones. Childhood memories, running around with your parents with not a single care in the world, memories from recent years like getting married, having a child. These are all happy memories, the go-to thoughts when someone asks you to think of something. Not so for soldiers. A soldier’s memories are rarely happy, and, if they are, they are always clouded, diluted by a darker memory of despair. Arthur would be desperately trying to conjure up an image of a happier time now, a time when he would be spending his life in the fields of Devon, with his family. His family had a small piece of land on which they kept several sheep and his beloved dog, Betsy, would sprint round all day, so he had said. His father was the local vicar and as I began to pray, I hoped Arthur was doing the same, willing him earnestly to try and get right with God, because surely, he was soon about to meet him.

  Carter and Vidler still sat cooped up against the log, directly behind me.

  “How we doing boys?” I whimpered, I was trying so hard to keep up an exterior of toughness, of coolness, but it was proving more and more difficult by the second.

  “We’re good,” returned Sid, “any second now.”

  As the first gunshot rang out, I pressed down harder on Arthur’s neck, receiving an agonised grunt as I did so. I let the pressure up slightly but soon realised that I was losing this fight, I was a small sponge, trying to hold back a breached dam. A single track of blood had begun to dribble its way out of his ear and had run down the back of his neck and out of sight.

  That was bad news. I had seen boys suffer from this before, the small bead of blood being a prelude to the inevitable passing of their mortal bodies. I wondered what might have caused the head injury that was beginning to take effect on Arthur. I looked around briefly to see if a large, blunt object had been caught up in the blast and given Arthur a good crack on the skull. He must have been in such pain. I knew that no matter what I did, no matter what I knew, it would be difficult for me to get Arthur back into a state where he would be able to walk to the coast, let alone make a run for it.

  “On my mark,” Sid gasped, we all held our breath now, even Arthur. I hated not being able to see what was going on, but one of my boys was lying there injured, he had to see me helping him, and no one else. I was his confidante, his go to man, his father in the army. And what father doesn’t want to help one of his children?

  Arthur tried to hold his breath as best he could, but a horrible, pathetic rasping noise kept escaping his lips. It began to bubble in the back of his throat as he started to drown in his own blood. He needed to cough but he knew he couldn’t. The chunk of wood that had impaled his cheek began to bob around as he tried desperately to clear his airways in any way that he could.

  Crack…Crack…

  It had started, the rifle shots began cracking away in pairs just behind me and I prayed more earnestly than ever that these boys were hitting their targets. The rounds kept snapping away behind me as Arthur’s breathing faltered to a new low. His breathing was far more sporadic now, as if it was taking too much of his energy and he needed a break between each inhalation. The rasping was accompanied with a harrowing wheeze, a whine just sitting at the back of his throat.

  I had found that I was trying to distance myself from the situation I currently found myself in, clearing my mind of any thoughts, leaving it a totally blank canvas, to the point where it felt like I was totally empty. I took a few deep, long breaths in and tried to imagine my life from years ago, to remember what it was like before I was a soldier.

  I stared at the tree that reciprocated my glare, almost as if it had been watching over me this whole time, like it had my back. I had long had a curious obsession with trees, ever since I was a young lad, I loved the way that they were so unpredictable, never having one tree that looked anything like the one that stood next to it. The way that the branches sprung up off one another, almost at random and how they had witnessed generation after generation, playing in the forests that surrounded them and often losing themselves in there for hours afterwards, trying to find their way home.

  I thought about these trees now, I was sure, judging by the width and solidity of their trunks, that they had been here for many hundreds of years. I wondered about how much they would have seen, what they could have told me they had witnessed, had they been able to vocalise their thoughts. I wondered if they had been round to watch the goings on of the Napoleonic Wars, watching the toing and froing of Napoleon’s Grande Armèe or even seeing the great general himself pass through their wooded guard of honour.

  I longed to be able to speak to the tree, or just to know the history that it had experienced, in the hope that I may gain some sort of inspiration from it,
a way out that I had not been able to see previously.

  “Sarge…We’re going to need to move pretty soonish, Sarge,” it was a fact that I wished wasn’t true.

  I stared at Arthur, wishing desperately that he wouldn’t see what we were going to have to do with him. In a way, I hoped that he died right now so that he wouldn’t witness our betrayal. The browned leaves that acted as his bed, had now turned from a scarlet back to brown as his liquid began to dry out. The blood flow had seemed to slow down somewhat, almost as if he was completely drained of any liquid now.

  His face was completely ashen, and his eyes flickered as they fought to remain conscious. I hated to think of what was going through his mind right now, a concoction of desperately trying to think of a happy memory, and trying to remain focused on staying alive.

  For the first time, I really thought about leaving him. He wasn’t going to survive, even if he was going to be taken to a friendly doctor, there was no way he wouldn’t die. He’d lost so much blood in such a short time and his skull had been bashed in by something. If we did try to take him with us, we wouldn’t make it ten yards before the Germans caught up with us and took us hostage.

  I had a duty of care to my men, and my attention must now shift from the mortally wounded, to getting these two others home to the best of my ability. As the thought developed in my mind, Arthur’s eyes stopped flickering, they were now wide with fear. I watched as he dug the nails of his fingers into the earth like he was trying to take a handful of it with him. I could feel his heart thumping in his chest as if mortar rounds were landing nearby, I felt every last movement that he took. His legs began to quiver as the fear began to subside a little as it gave in to shock.

  His eyes now filled with tears, he looked like a helpless little child. Lying there completely and utterly helpless. The shard of wood began to bob up and down as he fought hard to control his sobs, and then, a few words.

  “I…stay…here.” Each lisping word appeared to cause him a great discomfort as he winced and grimaced his way through what he wanted to say. He was in such a pitiful agony that I knew he meant every word that he managed to utter.

  With fear, it can paralyse and it can put you in so much danger if you let it get the better of you. It can often force you to make rash decisions, decisions that, for a soldier, can lead to you, and your men, being butchered. But fear is so often, the prerequisite to courage, to bravery. You have to go through it to be courageous. There is no other way around it. It acts as a motivator to the mind to stand up to whatever is going on, to face it head on. Arthur was doing that right at this moment. He knew he would die. He didn’t want us to leave him. But he knew that if we didn’t leave him, we’d die right alongside him. And he wasn’t a selfish lad.

  I shut my eyes for what felt like the first time in days. They stung intensely as I felt a barrage of water trying to cleanse them, or maybe they were tears. I opened them again as I let go of Arthur’s wound, allowing a gushing of more blood to dribble down his neck. I fought with myself to turn around, to pick up my weapon and let one of my men die. I had never done it before, it was not the way that my brain was wired.

  With an almighty amount of effort, consciously thinking through every single movement, and a feeling like I was going to throw up as soon as I had done it, I turned around.

  That was it. Arthur Knight had gone now.

  I grabbed my rifle and checked there was a round in it. I plonked it on top of the log and took aim.

  “Nice of you to join us,” remarked Vidler as I fired off my first round. There were loads of them. Carter and Vidler must have fired off quite a few rounds now, down to their last few I suspected. We would need an escape route, and fast.

  They were closing in. The net was being fastened. I could do nothing but watch as figures ducked behind trees, completely out of sight, hiding from the few bullets that bumbled their way towards them.

  “We’re going to need to move,” I managed to splutter, feeling foolish at stating something so blatantly obvious.

  “Grenades?” I questioned them, and as they fumbled around in their webbing, I moved over to Arthur.

  “I’m sorry mate,” I uttered as I began fiddling around, locating his grenade. His face was now one of acceptance, total resignation to the fact that he would soon no longer be here, no longer in pain.

  I gripped it and as I made my way back to my firing position I heard Vidler inform us that he was out of ammunition. I rolled the Mills Bomb around in my hand for a few seconds as I wondered whether I was doing the right thing. It was quite small, it fit quite comfortably in the palm of my hand, and the coolness of its casing felt pleasant against the clammy, bloodied hands that I now stared at. The casing was bumpy, like a pineapple, so that the user could get a better grip on the weapon, and so that it wouldn’t end up at the user’s feet when he got so nervous that it slipped out of his sweaty hands.

  “Okay boys…wait till I say,” I poked my head up and surveyed the landscape. A few figures had bravely emerged from their cover, and began to move through the newly formed mist caused by the explosions and cordite. I slouched back in to cover, hoping more than anything that they believed we were all dead. I would now just use my ears.

  “We’re okay…quiet…quiet…” I brought my voice down lower and lower, to the point where it was only audible to myself.

  The footsteps crunched and cracked as they disturbed the drying leaves. I heard a boot kick a spent cartridge, and another throw one towards a tree. A cough. Then a chuckle.

  I let them get closer, to the point where it felt like they were about to peer over and pour bullets into our skulls. I lifted my Mills bomb up to my face and, like a teacher making sure his pupils are watching, slowly pulled the pin from the top of it. I kept my hand gripped firmly on it, clamping the lever shut so that the striker pin didn’t inadvertently snap down and send bits of me in every direction.

  Once I let go of the lever, there would be a six or seven second delay before showtime, enough time for the enemy to lob it back in our direction, but I was banking on them diving for cover rather than any heroics. They had no way of knowing how long it had been sat ticking away in our palms for.

  Carter and Vidler repeated the motions back to me. All three grenades were set and ready to go. The crunch of boots grew louder and as they did so, replacing the cordite that hung in the air, I smelt cigarette smoke. I hoped that would buy us some more time, hopefully one or two were trying to light up, rifles slung across their shoulders, or better, on the ground.

  I made sure that I had perfect eye contact with my two boys, there was no real need to check, they had been staring at me, like two faithful dogs, waiting to see what my next action would be. I bobbed my head forwards and backwards, counting them down.

  3…2…1.

  With the final bob of my head, I launched myself up on the balls of my feet and threw the grenade at the nearest moving figure. I had no idea if the others had got up with me, or if the Germans had just witnessed a lone soldier hop up right in front of them.

  As soon as I felt the cold steel slip its way out of my grip, I turned, and did the only thing that I could think of doing.

  Run.

  4

  My face was smashed and bruised from the countless beatings it took from the various branches and bits of tree that assaulted my face. I could feel the blood trickle down as another sting appeared on my face, large chunks of skin left behind on the branches, so the birds could have a taste of human flesh, and see what they thought.

  My feet pummeled the ground as my blistered, wrinkled feet threw themselves in front of each other, each leg in a race with the other to get themselves clear of the danger.

  I did not know if the others were able to follow me and, for a moment, I did not much care. This was about me, about my own survival, no one else’s this time. They all had reasons for wanting to make it home alive. Carter wanted to make it back so that he could see his new-born child, due at some point during April
, but, as of yet, he had heard nothing of its birth. He had petitioned the CO for some leave, time and time again but, it had never got quite to the stage of sticking him on a ship and sending him home. I would never forgive the British Army if he never got to see his child for that.

  Even Vidler had a reason to go home. He knew from the moment the retreat started that his six months service in the Army would be extended indefinitely, and that he would have to see out the remainder of the war in this unit. He wanted to go home to apologise to his mother. During a moment of contemplation, Vidler had revealed a rare phenomenon, a feeling that he can’t possibly have ever felt at any other point in his sorry little life; remorse. He had knowingly put her through an awful time, he knew that she loved him unconditionally, like any mother should, and he had used it to his advantage. She had lied to the police about his whereabouts on several occasions, made up how he had come to possess certain items of high value, and on more than one occasion managed to help him get off the hook. But all of it had taken its toll, she was now ill, never going to recover and in the attic of a French bakery, Vidler had almost seemed to possess human emotions.

  I had my own reasons for getting home too. I wanted to live. I wasn’t ready to die yet, I wasn’t ready to lay my life down for someone else to be able to squander the rest of their life at my cost. I never let my family or even my wife cloud my judgements at moments like these, because that’s what got men killed. As a young, inexperienced soldier I had watched older soldiers turn to ineffective, useless pieces of meat as they let their head wander to thoughts of home. I had seen it India as one soldier, a recently promoted Sergeant, had led several of his men, himself included directly into an ambush as a result of his inattention. If he had left his personal feelings back at barracks, or better, in England, he would still be alive today, and so would thirty sepoys who were under his care.