As I Lay Dying

Twenty three

1917

England

Lying in a bed feels strange. Nurses bringing meals to me, constant fussing and being told not to move.

I can't take myself off red alert. I keep expecting someone to run in and grab me, order me on to my feet and shove a gun in my hands. I wake several times a night and the shock of a silent ward is almost as great as being told it's a night raid.

Through my dreams I wander the trenches. In quiet moments I see Tommy's ghastly white face as he begged for his mother, the thick, sticky blood pouring down his face waits for me when I close my eyes.

I thought I hated the trenches, but I don't think I was prepared for my return to England. Sometimes I want to grab the nurses, berate them, scream at them. How can they be so calm when there are men dying in France? How can they act as if everything is normal, as if we haven't just returned from a living hell?

In the four days since I arrived I've been plagued with nightmares, both living and waking ones. Everything is so clinical, calm and peaceful here. It's like being hidden away in room when you know the rest of the house is burning around you.

I'm not the only one. All the men here have the same haunted, wary look. A solider in the bed opposite mine lost both of his legs and spends his days rocking back and forth, muttering to himself. His parents visited yesterday, obviously anticipating a joyful reunion with their son. What they found, the way their son screamed and recoiled from them as the nurse ushered them away cut them deeply and his mothers silently horrified, sobbing face is burned into my mind.

It was painful to watch. Perhaps more to see the realisation dawn on her face. She may have her son home at last, but the boy she nurtured from infancy is no longer there. He has been utterly broken beyond repair and there was nothing she could do to protect him when he needed her most.

I suppose it is a twisted blessing that I have no one to weep for me, to see the broken shell I have become.

I wonder at how the world can be filled with such pain and sadness. So many stories, countless lives shattered because of this damn war.

I gaze over the ward at the boy, rocking back and forth and wonder what his life would have been. He's another victim, another lost soul.

Today the ward is being overseen by a cheerful young nurse. It's a bright summers day and she is insistent that as many of us as possible are taken out into the sunshine. I've watched as she's overseen the hospital porters lift men into wheelchairs, or propped them on crutches and guide them out. My bed is nearest the window and I'm one of the last to be approached.

I try to protest, I would much rather stay indoors, but she brushes aside my arguments and insists that I am lifted by the two porters into a wooden, three wheeled chair. She fusses over me, wrapping blankets around my legs before smiling widely at me and turning towards other of her other charges.

My leg still pains me and the area that her hand has just brushed stings as though she has slapped it.

It's a slow procession down the corridor. The porter behind me chats pleasantly, almost to himself as he pushes me along.

The sunlight is so bright that I wince against it. The shade of various trees houses a multitude of men in various states of injury. Some, those capable of walking, are sat in the full glare of the sun on benches, reading papers or playing chess. Others who are less mobile, like myself, have been wheeled into the shade and sit oddly hunched into themselves, like ravens in a churchyard.

The porter swears softly under his breath as the wheels of my chair catch on a tuft of grass. He fumbles for a moment then lurches me forward so hard I grip the edges of the chair. Within moments I'm placed neatly under the tree, feet away from other men who barely seem to notice me.