«letters to the somme»

tiddlywinks.

Thick, thick smoke, opaque and choking and deadly at times.

Bullets, raining down like burning hail.

The sky is invisible.

A pack of soldiers around him, yelling instructions he cannot here.

James has gone over the top.

The Battle of the Somme has begun. British soldiers race towards the enemy trenches, in some bizarre race to kill people. Vicious hedges of barbed wire kills some instantly. Others lie on the spiky, deadly metal, dying slowly and painfully until they scream hoarsely for God to take them.

Grenades are thrown almost instantly, shells wider than a soldier and almost as tall explode on them. Countless Lee Enfield rifles are thrown out of the soldiers’ hands by these, and shrapnel embeds themselves into them, deep and white-hot.

“Is it always like this?” James yells, his helmet banging against his forehead. His hand wipes away the sweat that drips from his forehead. His hand fumbles as he pulls out another grenade for smoke cover.

“Not usually!” Bobby yells back. He is at the front, waving his rifle about, aiming carefully for any hidden Germans.

“Duck!” James shrieks, as a bullet whistles past Bobby’s head.

“Close one. Officer Brown’s grown on you.” He grins back, teeth white in the gloom.

It is one in the afternoon.

“Yeah.” James says. It is surreal, the way that they are joking on a battlefield, men dropping like flies all around them.

It’s the only way they stay sane.

They have made almost no progress, dodging shells and bullets and grenades. James feels as if his eardrums will explode into tiny bits. And still they inch forward, knowing that they are walking into the doorway of death. If they run away, they will be found and shot.

Better to die in bravery than in cowardice.

An hour later and they have barely extended ten metres. No man’s land is full of dust and shrapnel and mines and everything deadly under the sun.

“Chlorine gas! Masks!” A man shouts from over the way. The men scramble for their masks and, fumbling, fasten them on. Their hearts beat faster than a hummingbird until they are securely fastened. One unlucky one has forgotten his mask, and instead has to urinate into his handkerchief and make do.

Man fall like pins all around them, in a bizarre game of tiddly-winks. Bullets, shells, grenades. All are pounded down on them, and yet still they move on, weight on their shoulders, forcing their bodies forward, left, right, left, right.

“RETREAT!” The men prepare to turn.

“Run.” Bobby mutters suddenly, as the smoke starts to clear slightly.

“What? Why?”

“A Hun with a grenade. I’ll hold him off. Go! Better one die than ten!”

“But-”

“Here, take this.” His fingers shake as he opens his pocket. An envelope lies within, crumple slightly.

“Send it if I don’t come back. Make sure you dodge.” Bobby grins at James and turns, shooting at the Germans. James blinks for a moment, and another soldier pulls him off.

As if in slow motion, he hears the pin being pulled out of the grenade. It is thrown, and Bobby leaps out of the way.

He crumples to the ground, in a puddle of mud. James is far away by now, but he looks back at Bobby’s crumpled form.

“James, leave him. He’s a goner.” Matt, the soldier, shakes his head. James glares at him, eyes threatening tears.

“He has a wife and a son.” And he turns and runs blithely.

It is as if God is shielding him as he runs, unharmed, back at Bobby. The German is still there. He is younger than James thought, barely seventeen. Blue eyes, wide and child-like, stare back at James. He murmurs something in German, looks about, and turns, running.

James is put in mind of a story Bobby told him about the first Christmas, back in 1914. Where they had all woken, walked over the top, and played a game of football, and exchanged salutations, and had drinks together. About how no one had cared about fighting. Bobby had met an English-speaking man who worked in a factory in Berlin, and had three sons. They had talked about their lives back home, their wives, their children, their dreams.

They are all the same inside.

James lifts Bobby, throwing him over his shoulder. Bobby is a well-built man, and James staggers under his weight. But he is determined. Staggering, he creeps slowly, painfully back to the trenches, stopping when a shell explodes. Blinded with tears and sweat and dirt and his horrible, too-large helmet, he keeps going. Bobby groans on his back. He seems too slow. Excruxiatingly slow. Surely Bobby cannot be dead. 

He cannot comprehend trench life without him. If trench life can be issued with such a name. 

It seems like days when they finally arrive. Two stretcher-bearers stand in the trench, and James shouts for them. Like in a dream, Bobby is placed on the dirty linen stretcher. His uniform is soaked, and his face is pale and unmoving. Bobby is carried away.

James sinks to the floor and cries until there are no more tears to cry.