Connie’s Courage (27 page)

As he spoke the boy was standing up and trying to tear off his jacket, flaying against the hands reaching out to restrain him.

‘For Christ's sake, if he starts spouting off like that to the Captain, he'll have him court-martialled, someone muttered. ‘And a right sod he is, an all.

‘Aye, if he gets that far, another soldier added, meaningfully.

Everyone knew that their Captain, who had a notoriously vicious streak, had given an order to shoot anyone trying to desert.

‘Let go of me.' Johnny was pushing against their restraining hands as he struggled to break free, sobbing noisily as he did so.

For Gawd's sake, someone shut ‘im up, before I do it me'self. ‘E's making that much racket the Huns ‘ull be able to hear ‘im over on their lines.'

‘Johnny, try not to be afraid,' Harry coaxed him gently, but the boy shook his head and stared white-faced at him.

‘It's all right for you, Harry. Everyone knows that you're lucky. They even call you that! Lucky Lawson.' His face puckered. ‘But I'm not! I just know that some bloody Hun's bullet's got my name on it already. I might as well be shot down here as wait. I might as well get it over with now …'

He was starting to panic again and pull away, and Harry knew that he had to do something to stop him. ‘Come on, Johnny, pull yourself together, and I'll tell you what. If you like you can wear my jacket and I'll wear yours. That way, you'll have my luck, and if there is a bullet with your name on it, it will find me instead of you!'

It was the kind of logic that made sense to men on the edge of war, and Harry held his breath as Johnny hesitated. The tear-filled eyes widened and a muscle twitched in the youthful jaw. ‘You mean it, Harry?' he demanded.

‘Of course,' Harry assured him, immediately
starting to unfasten his jacket, shrugging it off, to stand in his vest as he held the jacket out to him.

Up the line they were already being given the signal to march out. Harry tensed as Johnny started nervously, and licked his lips. If he ran now he would be shot down without mercy, and whilst Johnny may not care, his family would, Harry reflected pityingly, as he watched the boy shudder and shiver, drenched in the sweat of his own terror.

‘All right, men …

‘Give it to me then.' Snatching the jacket Johnny began to tear off his own.

‘Hey, you up there. Why the hell aren't you dressed? Get a move on unless you want my bayonet up your bloody backside …

‘Come on, Harry, otherwise it will be you as gets shot, Ernie muttered as he thrust Johnny's jacket at Harry and helped him pull it on.

The line was already moving out as Harry fastened the khaki. To his relief, Johnny had fallen into step ahead of him. Quickly Harry shouldered his pack. Each one weighed a good seventy pounds and contained entrenching tools, two gas helmets, wire cutters, two hundred-and-twenty rounds of ammunition, two sandbags, two Mills bombs, a groundsheet, a haversack, a water bottle and a field dressing.

The ceaseless pounding of the British artillery had been replaced by an eerie silence, as the barrage was lifted to allow the men to advance into no man's land.

Harry felt his stomach muscles clench, but he deliberately kept his gaze fixed forward on the back of the man in front of him, refusing to give in to the temptation to raise his eyes and look ahead.

‘Right men, rifles at the ready. Fix bayonets.'

Harry felt the clamminess of his grip, as he responded automatically to the orders.

Every single man here was a volunteer. They had been trained for this very purpose, this very day, for this push that would bring them victory!

‘Come on, you lot, orders is to push forward at a smart pace, not dawdle like you was taking your girl for a walk in the park. Pick up those feet. Keep up with the line in front of you … You there … you re out of step.

Somewhere ahead of them Harry could hear the sharp crackle of gunfire mingling with screams and groans. Smoke filled the air, sucking in the khaki-clad figures ahead. There was no jolly singing now, only a smothering silence broken by gunfire.

‘Remember we've got forty thousand yards to cross before we reach the enemy, and it's going to be a piece of cake. Our lads have been out ahead of us doing the dirty work, cutting through the wire and clearing the way for us. All you namby pamby lot have got to do is put a bullet into the enemy, the Sergeant roared. ‘Keep moving.

Out in front, Harry could see vague solitary figures in the mist and his stomach tensed and churned. Had they reached the German lines so soon?

A bullet whined past his ear, and behind him he heard a thin, high scream that lifted the hair on his scalp and made him shudder, but he knew he couldn't risk turning round.

They were surrounded by gunfire now, and suddenly a group of men came running toward them through the mist, calling out to them, ‘Get back. Get back. You can't get through. We're being shot down like bloody sitting ducks.'

‘Get back in line there.'

Harry heard a man scream as a bullet thudded into his back. All around them they could hear sounds of panic and death, but their Sergeant was urging them on, his face set and grim.

The sun which had shone so brightly earlier had gone, blotted out by smoke, its acrid smell scorching Harry's lungs as he struggled to walk and breathe. The ground had become bumpy and uneven, but it was only when his foot slipped on something wet that Harry looked down and realised that the obstacles he was trying to walk over were bodies.

For a moment he couldn't move, shock gripping him by the throat, a hand grabbed at his ankle and when he looked down again all he could see was a body ripped open to reveal spilling entrails, and a blood-pulped mess where the man's head should have been.

His stomach heaved, but before he could move the Sergeant thrust him out of the way and raised his gun. ‘Better to put him out of his misery, poor
sod,' he muttered, before demanding savagely, ‘get a move on you lot. We've got work to do.'

For months, they had heard nothing but how noble their cause was, how honourable their calling, how assured their victory. But there was nothing noble or honourable about this: about your body jerking in agonising death throes, with your guts and your brains spilling into the dirt, to mix with the vomit of those who could see the horror of their own fate there in front of them.

The Sergeant was running at their side urging them forward, and abruptly through the gun smoke Harry could see the enemy lines.

‘Get to it, me …'

Harry saw the look of surprise freeze on the Sergeant's face as the shell hit him. His arm, shorn off by the explosion, thudded into Harry's face, whilst the Sergeant himself lay face down amongst the other bodies.

Harry was vaguely aware that everything around him seemed to be happening in slow motion. A figure loomed up in front of him, and ran toward him, and he felt the heat of the bullet that whistled past his ear.

‘Arry look out.'

He turned at the sound of Ernie's voice, just in time to miss the bayonet aimed for his gut. Harry retaliated immediately, not allowing himself to think that he was plunging his bayonet into human flesh; not allowing himself to hear the agonised scream of his victim.

Time and reality ceased to exist, here was only blood and death and the sound of bullets mingling with the screams of the wounded and fallen. The butt of Harry's rifle glistened red with blood. It had soaked his hands and run up his arms. He could taste it in his mouth and smell its hot, sweet death-scent.

Somewhere, somehow, they must have become detached from the rest of their unit, he recognised vaguely. Ernie was still beside him and he could see the Corporal several yards away, but there was no sign of any of the others.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sudden lunge of an enemy figure and he cried out automatically to Ernie in warning. He lifted his rifle to fire at the German. Blood oozed from the hole in the uniformed chest.

‘That one nearly had you, Ernie. Harry grinned, and then froze as he saw his friend clutch at the bayonet piercing his stomach.

‘Ernie …'

‘I'm done for Arry …

‘No …' Frantically Harry dropped to his knees as Ernie sank to the ground, putting his arms around him.

‘Bin the best pal I ever had you ave, Arry, Ernie whispered to him. ‘Do me a favour will yer mate … mek sure you gets out of this. And when you do, mek sure you does enough living for both of us …

‘Ernie.

Even as he sobbed his friend's name, and felt the hot flow of his anguished, denying tears sear their way down his face, Harry knew that it was too late.

Bullets hailed down around him like a metal snowstorm, but he ignored them as he tenderly wiped the blood from Ernie's mouth, and equally tenderly closed his eyes.

Bloody Huns! Bloody war! Bloody Ernie for going and getting himself killed! As he got up and staggered forward, slipping and sliding on the bodies of his dead comrades, Harry didn't even see the rifle being levelled at him, never mind hear the bullet's whine. All he knew was the pain tearing at his flesh, so agonising that he screamed and writhed, his body contorting, as he fell to the ground.

Semi-conscious, he lay amongst the fallen and dying, unable to move. He could see the man lying near to him – no, not a man a boy – Harry corrected himself drowsily. A numb coldness seeped relentlessly through him.

The boy who looked as young, if not younger, than Johnny, had been shot through the neck, and blood bubbled from his wound with each breath he took. He was crying for his mother in German. A wave of helpless pity searing him, Harry inched over to him.

Miraculously, he still had his pack, and painstakingly he struggled to open it and find the wound dressing, his movements slow and painful.

The boy was bleeding badly and Harry grunted in satisfaction as he finally managed to staunch the flow of blood.

Somewhere close at hand he heard someone scream and saw, out of the corner of his eye, the downward thrust of a bayonet. Instinctively he covered the boy's body with his own. The bayonet thrust toward his heart, but slid into Harry's arm instead, as its owner lost his balance.

Everything was pain. A thick red mist of it that clutched him in its sharp talons. Beneath him the boy's body, like his own, felt deathly cold. Harry could feel the will to live slipping away from him, along with the sounds of the battle.

Just before he lost consciousness, he whispered Connie's name, his lips curving into a smile as though they had somehow tasted hers.

News of the terrible disaster that was the Battle of the Somme cast a pall of shock over the country as thick and choking as the black pall of death that hung over the battlefield itself.

Horrific tales of the number of men lost had reached Connie and the rest of the hospital, long before the first of the injured men began to arrive. No one could remain untouched by it. Every woman had, or knew of, a man who had fought there.

Crowds of white-faced women waited to meet the hospital trains bringing back their wounded, some of them breaking into agonised sobs of deep despair.

At the Infirmary, like the other nurses, Connie worked grim-faced, hardly daring to whisper her own private prayers, and certainly not daring to ask any questions of her friend.

As the troop trains rolled in and the wards overflowed, she tried to comfort herself with the belief that the War Office was always mercifully quick to
inform families of a death; and that every day, every hour, that slipped by, strengthened the possibility of both Frank and Harry having survived.

And then, three days after the battle, she saw Mavis standing in the door to her ward, and she knew immediately. Only her love for her friend enabled her to put Mavis first, and demand fiercely of her, ‘Frank?'

Numbly Mavis shook her head. ‘Not yet. But we have heard … She stopped, her body visibly shaking, ‘Rosa has received a telegram from the War Office. Harry was killed in action on the first of July.

‘No!

At first Connie thought she had actually given the feral primitive scream that had torn at her heart and throat, but Mavis's stiff lack of reaction told her that, miraculously, she hadn't.

‘My mother … Mavis's mouth started to tremble and she fought to control her lips. ‘I have to go to her, Connie, and I intend to stay with her for as long as she needs me …

Sharply and painfully Connie suddenly felt excluded, aware that she had no right to grieve for Harry as anything more than a mere friend. ‘I shall pray for Frank's safety, she told Mavis quietly.

No matter how much she wanted to do so she couldn't leave her ward, and so she had to plunge on somehow doing what had to be done, whilst all the time her shocked grief savaged her.

How could Harry be dead? How could he no longer be here in this world? How could she continue to live in it without him inhabiting it? Only now did she realise what comfort she had taken just knowing he was there. She had thought she had known grief, that it had been her companion and her enemy, but now she knew she had not known it all. What she had thought of as grief had merely been a pale shadow of its reality.

She would rather bear a thousand times the pain of Harry loving someone else but living, than endure this unending agony.

Nothing could ever be the same.
She
could never be the same. The world could never be the same. Because the light in it that had been Harry's life had been extinguished, leaving it a dark and soulless place.

‘I've seen Matron, she was very understanding.' Wearily Mavis sank down onto Connie's bed.

It was just over a month since they had heard the news of Harry's death, followed by the information that he had been buried with his fallen comrades.

Connie had known immediately what that had meant! She had had nightmares then – searing, shockingly explicit, and unbearable – about his poor mutilated body.