World War 1- PROSE PIECE -Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

World War 1- PROSE PIECE

-Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

The smell of dampness was the first immediate memory I had. The smell of the smouldering earth, of sodden earth and even the stench of decay had reached my nostrils. All I could visualize was blackness, like a cinemagoer that gazes in awe towards the cinema screen oblivious of what will come and commence before his very eyes. I heard gunshots, the screech of incoming artillery shells and mortar fire.

I awoke to find two young soldiers, tommies to be precise covered up from their arses to their necks in muck. They were holding me up. I could not hear what they were saying, their mouths moved vigorously as they looked and referred back to each other.

I distantly felt that I was outside of my body, viewing all these events as if they had been transmitted from some distant source, outside myself and beyond my immanent understanding. These two young privates led me forward, it looked like the second world war and I looked around and viewed the narrow muddy strip of earth, which men had fought and died for, for an acre of ground, that cost tens of thousands of men their lives for the pomposity and vanity of the generals and the ruling class.

“Will he pull through?”

Said one young private unto another.

“Definitely, he needs rest, he just has a slight concussion. Give him time and he’ll be back on his feet”, said another voice to my left.

“Well sit Mason down and he’ll feel, as right as rain.”

“Good, well we better inform the captain, on our whereabouts and on the safety of Mason.”

“Well he’s lucky that concussion might just be enough to save him from having to go over the line.”

“Maybe. But I still think he should have to face the Bosche just like everyone else.”

“Oh he will. Too many lads like him, have just come out of school and died within only a year of leaving.”

The deafening roars of howitzers fired from the British lines, mortars, rifles and shouting men, faces of agony, buried in a silent death were pressed in quagmires of muck as I limped silently through the trenches with my two comrades. Blood and muck was caked on the faces of many desperate men, some who were mere boys were having their own nervous breakdown while having to face the colossal anxiety that gripped every man that tore him asunder, while some waited for the whistle to blow and others proceeded with the death chorus and the death march bleating out as puppets, valiant death defying children, ran forward to the German firing squads.

The experience was beyond the surreal, as everything was more animate than a dream, it was real, and I possessed this old body, this life, this identity and person, and became a youth again in the body of this eighteen year old boy. The great harrowing journey of living through fear is interrupted as fear leaves us all for a period of time once your outside your personality, outside pain and opinion and you simply exist as an undisturbed entity that exists and roams for life in perhaps another body or another reality beyond this one here present. Thoughts rushed through my own present mind that had amalgamated with my old body that moved fatally in tune with the time and events of an ancient life in a young man’s body.

“Hey Mason”, said one grimy faced private to my left.

“Yeah!” I could hear my own voice involuntarily, moving and my arms raising and falling, while I watched the mechanics of my old body move in motion and I had no control over what was occurring, but I inevitably sat within my own mind, in the witness box, to the testimony of what happened and why it had to happen.

“Mason are you alright?”

“Yeah, it feels like I have an awful headache.”

“No you have been suffering from concussion. Enemy shellfire has been pounding our lines all morning and afternoon; it must have gotten too close for comfort in your case. But don’t worry you will be fine.”

“Thanks, Barnes.”

“Don’t worry mate!”

“ Well I will be fine until I have to step out of this trench and face enemy fire.”

“Well destiny is law. I don’t think we can wrestle with our fate.”

“No I am afraid we cant.”

We both lit cigarettes as if we signalled or said our farewells, before the whistle blew and our time would come to face the German guns.

“Stand in line men,” roared the Captain, as he carefully and sullenly inspected the men, surveying their faces, lining out in rows, with their full kits by their sides. Many men carried trench cutters in their back pockets so they could cut the barbed wire that weaved and intersected through no mans land and separated the British and the German military personages.

“Burke, I want you to light my cig before we go out there.”

Said one soldier to another, as each man showed boldness and brashness, but every man showed fear, and I felt the circulation of nervous tension pierce me, as my chest hurt unbearably and my heart pounded as if it knew that today was my last day, in this life. All I had seen in this life was my last half hour on earth and had known that my name was Steven Mason, I was eighteen years old and I came from Bedfordshire, because I heard several men inquire as to what my life was like in Bedfordshire.

But I cannot even remember my parents from this life; perhaps this was a death review and not a life review at all!

“I don’t want any nannies to wet their pants at the thought that we are facing the German guns! We march to glory and valiant victory, in the name of God and the empire herself, we are all serving and defending our nation, with a blood sacrifice.

Those who survive shall have their honours paid to them by their very own children and their grandchildren as heroes in their own right and those who die shall be honoured and ushered into heaven by God himself. But those who flee the battle deserve to die because they think they can escape their duty. 

Your duty is to die, and those who escape death are privileged and will be recalled for battle once the battle cry is given. Who can escape death? No one can, life is a perpetual battle, hear that men? Those who survive shall return to an economic war, where unemployment is rife, food is in shortage and families struggle to make ends meat. You will have to face hardship no matter what happens, but you can be reassured that you will be adored by all the children and the elders of the land, as heroes to your local communities. Now men its time to face the guns!”

“Fix bayonets!”

Shouted the lieutenant that stood to my immediate left.

“I am bloody well not looking forward to another run in no mans’ land!”

Said one soldier rather wearily as he stared into my eyes with intensity for several minutes and he could not cut his gaze from mine until the dreaded whistle blew.

“Hurrah!” Shouted every man for miles around, as an entire chorus of Tommies sounded out their vain cry of defiance against the German guns. It reminded me of my childhood in Bedfordshire and how several gangs of children would play with their wooden guns on the pavement. These children nearly had to be muzzled by their mothers, when out in public, for they would nearly kill each other, when trying to mimic the viciousness and the hideous game that real soldiers would perform, when men killed men and nothing was done in pretence, but no lesson was learnt from childhood unto adulthood, too many had never learnt a thing on the pacifism and diplomacy between fellow human beings.

Men began to crawl up and out of their trenches, some rose awkwardly and then toppled over as the bullets whizzed by. The tempo of battle heightened, and tens of thousands of men streamed, gathered and dispersed from their trenches for miles around, as the living voluntarily gave themselves up for death.

The Captain ushered men forward, in was just another number and a rank, below anything to be considered worthy of saving.

“Forward men. No hesitation! Up and out, this is the great run for the Huns, we must take their line today!”

For all his talk of “we” and “us”, he himself did not partake in the bloodshed and the terror, he stayed behind to “inspect the trenches to see if any man would trouble the brigade with the dishonourable act of cowardice”. He was to stay behind in comfort and in relatively safe surroundings, “to keep a safe eye on the men advancing.”

A safe eye indeed!

The ladders had been mounted and men lined up, to leave the trenches, while our artillery blazed in the background- never fully penetrating the far reaching outer rim of the German lines- and it was my time to advance up from the earth unto no man’s land above with my brothers in arms.

A close friend called Barnes emerged beside me as we both trudged forward 10 paces in the muck, dodging rifles and machine gun fire. The howling war cry of mortar rained down on a pack of advancing Tommies who were immediately behind us.

“Run like men. Never crawl like a boy. We must run like men!”

Said Barnes in desperation as the bullets whizzed around us, and we ducked beneath barbwire and small wooden constructs that covered and defied our entry to the German lines.

“First line of wire”, I said to my friend.

“Yes. Lets get our clippers out!”

“Got them”, I said earnestly.

“Well then, over we go!”

Many of our friends around us were falling like flies to the German rounds that barked and whistled past our ears.

“Come on men, hurry up, this is only the first line, lets get going”, said the lieutenant, while he waved his hand gun in a dramatic gestation before he was shot and fell down stone dead into a puddle of muddy water.

“See you have to be careful, you have to conceal yourself when it’s feasible, it’s the logic in wars of attrition like this one”, said Barnes rather comically and yet with a tone of lamentation rising through his gruff voice.

“Yes, that’s true.”

Over we went through the first line of barbed wire in no man’s land, as our ranks were reduced and the charge grew to a crawl. That was the moment when I was to die, a sense of death extended or hovered over my body, and it seemed like the guns had actually ceased, for the briefest moment. No! I was trapped in a quagmire of muck that extended unto the second line of barbed wire, constructs and fences. How was any man meant to overcome the enmity of this lying land? Everything went against our very chances for survival. My feet were stuck in muck, I slopped about for a while, slinging through the muck.

“What’s wrong”, said Barnes carefully glancing over his right shoulder.

“Get down, cover yourself, and get behind me. I don’t want you to run ahead of me, since at least you don’t even have any wire clippers yourself. Let me run in front, I ordered desperately”

“What, you’re mad, do you want to die?”

“No! I just want to assist you and do my duty!”

Then as I pushed him aside, and strode forward, I could see that I had accidentally pushed him into a sinking quicksand of squelching muck.

“Hey wait! Come back!”