The Devil in No Man's Land: 1917 (3 page)

Harker led them on a loose lap of the village. As expected, with the Allied attack so obviously imminent, the place itself was deserted; the German soldiers had been summoned to the front lines, apart from the tiny security force keeping warm and dry in the Crest farmhouse. But something nagged at the Captain.

It's too quiet
, he thought.
Not even a single patrol. Not one.

A chill shuddered up his spine. He trusted his instincts; they had saved his life more than once in the years since this godforsaken war had been declared. So when Lieutenant Thorpe suggested that they make their way back and report no changes in the German positions, as they had known there wouldn't be, Harker shook his head.

“Let's check the village,” he said.

None of the men said anything. He knew they wouldn't, but he also knew them well enough to read the disappointment in their eyes. Their mission, given to them by a demented old man determined to do them harm, had gone better than any of them would have dared to hope, and none of them were keen to push their luck. But when their Captain set off down the road towards the centre of Passchendaele, walking in a slow crouch, his rifle pointing forwards, they followed him immediately.

The six men fanned out across the road in a wide inverted V and made their way forward, past the small cottages and silos on the edge of the village, past a general store and a stable, past the larger houses that had presumably once belonged to the area's merchants and landowners, and into the small, picturesque village square.

It was empty. The entire village was empty.

The residents had long since fled the advancing lines, but there should have been at least two German patrols, looping in figures of eight with the village square as their crossing point. But there was nobody. Just the empty buildings, the largest of which was the church that overlooked the square.

It towered over the silent village, a wide brick building flanked by two sloping wings, with a tall steeple standing at its rear. A small courtyard lay to one side, in which a small wrought-iron bench sat between two skeletal trees.

Where the roof of the church had been, there was now only a gaping, jagged hole. The glass in the windows was also gone, leaving dark slits in the red brick. But, as Harker led his men silently into the square, he realised that the church was not completely dark. A faint yellow light was visible in the doorway, illuminating the edges of a door that was standing ajar.

“Sir...” Thorpe whispered, but Harker held up a hand and cut him off.

“I see it,” he whispered.

Quincey pointed his men towards the front of the church. They moved quickly across the cobblestones of the square and took up their positions: Potts and Kavanagh either side of the window to the right of the door, McDonald and Ellis flanking the one on the left. Harker and Thorpe moved to the door itself.

“What do you see?” the Captain whispered to Ellis.

The Private turned his head and inched it out across the empty window frame. He looked into the church for no more than a second, then pulled back and turned to Harker.

“Two candles on the altar, sir. There's something in between them ? looks like a statue. The rest is darkness.”

Quincey nodded. He turned to Thorpe and jerked his head towards the door. The six men peeled away from the brick wall and raised their rifles. Thorpe stepped forward, gripped the edge of the heavy door, and pushed.

A creak rang out, enormously loud in the silent village, as the hinges protested. The Lieutenant put his shoulder to the door and it swung inwards. Harker and Potts stepped forward, their Lee-Enfield rifles pointing over Thorpe's shoulders, ready for the slightest sign of movement, but there was none. The interior of the church was as still and dark as a crypt, the only light coming from the candles on the altar that Ellis had described.

There was a strong coppery smell in the air as the six men made their way into Passchendaele church. Above them, thick grey clouds hung low above the missing roof, blotting out the stars.

Harker sent Potts and Ellis to the right and left. If the lanterns that would have once been used to illuminate the congregation still contained fuel, perhaps they could shed some light on the source of the strange, metallic smell.

Familiar, though,
thought Harker.
I know that smell. If I could only place it.
Matches flared in the darkness, first to the left and then the right, and Quincey heard the rasping squeak of lantern doors opening. The flames flickered, then the oil caught, and the church was bathed in pale yellow light.

“Oh my God,” gasped Thorpe.

Harker's breath caught in his throat.

“This isn't a church,” Ellis said to his left, his voice trembling. “It's a slaughterhouse.”

Sprawled across the pews and the ornate tiled floor of the church were at least a dozen German soldiers, their skin ghastly white, their mouths twisted into eternal expressions of pain and terror.

Blood was splashed across the whitewashed walls and pooled in near-black ovals on the floor beneath the men. And, in the flickering light of the lanterns, the squad could see that the shape on the altar was no statue; it was the body of a soldier, little more than a boy, bare-chested with his braces hanging off his narrow frame. He sat between the candles, his body riddled with bullet holes, his head lowered towards the blood-soaked floor.

“Dear Lord,” Potts whispered. “What is this?”

Harker looked at his young sniper. His face was almost as pale as the corpse he was staring at, a middle-aged Captain who had died crawling towards the door of the church. The man's body lay in the aisle between the rows of pews, one hand pressed to his throat, the other gripping something tightly in his fist. Beneath him, a great streak of dried blood, smeared by his elbows and knees, led back towards the altar.

Harker stepped forward and knelt down next to the man. He reached out, took the clenched fist in one hand and prised the cold, stiff fingers back with the other. There was a high tinkling noise as something fell to the tiled floor. The squad gathered round their Captain to see what the man had held on to, even as the last breath rattled out of his lungs.

It was a small gold crucifix.

Several of his men drew breath, sharply.

Harker leant forward and moved the man's other hand away from his neck. A wide gash ran from his windpipe to almost the bottom of his ear. There was no blood around the wound and, even to Harker's untrained eye, the edges of the cut seemed jagged and uneven, not the smooth lines left by a knife or a bayonet.

“That's a bite,” said Kavanagh, in a low voice. “Pa's wolfhound took one of the lambs spring before last. Ripped its throat right out. Looked like that.”

Harker glanced up at Kavanagh. The Private was visibly trembling.

“Check them,” the Captain said. “Check them all.”

His men moved quickly through the church, examining the Germans for any signs of life. Harker stood up, stepped carefully over the corpse in the aisle, and walked towards the altar.

The boy was as pale as the rest of them, his skin almost translucent. His head was lowered, his elbows on his knees, his feet dangling eight inches above the floor. As Quincey approached him, he could see that the bullet wounds covered his arms and neck as well as his torso.

So many bullets for one man. Why so many?

Then the boy raised his head and Quincey Harker bit his lip so he didn't scream.

Blood, dried to a crumbling powder, coated the lower half of his face. His eyes were a deep crimson, centred with malevolent spots of shiny black. His mouth was curled into a terrible grimace of agony and as the rest of Harker's squad appeared at his shoulder, their rifles trained on the boy, shouting and gasping and crossing themselves in the oily, yellow-lit church, it twisted open.

“
Komm zu dir
.
Komm zu dir. Komm zu dir. Komm zu dir. Komm zu dir
.”

The boy repeated this over and over, his terrible red eyes never leaving Harker's. Quincey returned the stare.

“What's he saying, Ellis? What in God's name is he saying?”

“He's saying wake up, sir,” answered the Private. “Over and over. Wake up.”

“Wake up?” said Thorpe. “Wake up who? What happened to these men? Dammit, what happened here?” He stepped towards the boy, his rifle set against his shoulder. “Boy,” he said. “Look at me—”

Harker felt ice race up his spine; he opened his mouth to tell his friend to keep back, but was too late.

With a screech that sounded more anguished than angry, the boy launched himself off the altar and crashed into Thorpe, wrapping his legs round him and sending him sprawling on to the first row of pews. The movement was so fast, so impossibly fast, that none of the squad fired a single shot before the boy dipped his face to Thorpe's neck and tore his throat out in a shimmering eruption of blood.

“No!” bellowed Harker, firing his rifle into the side of the boy's head, hurling him sideways with a gout of crimson trailing from the hole above his temple. The boy slammed into the tiled floor, but lurched round immediately to face the men, his eyes wide, his teeth bared. He tensed his body to spring again, as Harker yelled, “Fire!” The squad unloaded their rifles into the boy, driving him back against the wall of the church, where he slumped in a bloody heap beneath one of the empty, staring windows.

Quincey ran to Thorpe and cradled his friend's head. Blood was pouring out of the hole in his neck, and his face was already pale. He looked up at Harker disbelievingly.

Not like this. After everything we've been through. Not like this.
Harker wiped blood from Thorpe's cheeks and forehead and told his friend he was going to be fine, it was just a scratch, he was fine, he was fine. Thorpe opened his mouth, but dark blood poured down his chin, and he made no sound other than a high-pitched whistle as his breath escaped through the hole in his neck.

The rest of the squad stood helplessly behind their Captain, looking down at Thorpe. Tears stood in the corners of Ellis's eyes, and Potts looked like he was struggling not to be sick. McDonald and Kavanagh just stared, blank looks of incomprehension on their faces.

Thorpe swivelled his eyes and looked at Harker. Then the spark in them flickered and died, and they rolled back white as he breathed his last. Quincey lowered his face against his friend's, and squeezed his own eyes tightly shut, as though there was some way he could undo what had happened, that he might open his eyes and see Thorpe smiling up at him, the wound on his neck gone. But when he did open them, all he saw was blood, and death.

He held Thorpe for a long time, knowing he should attend to his men, but completely unable to do so, until a noise to his left made him look up.

The boy was standing in front of the empty window.

Blood ran in dark rivers from the holes caused by the squad's bullets, but still he stood.

“What madness is this?” asked Ellis, his voice little more than a whisper.

Harker stood up and backed away, never taking his eyes off the young German. The boy turned his head right and left, his teeth bared and shockingly white against the blood that was smeared round his mouth and chin. His glowing eyes rolled; his fists clenched and relaxed.

This boy is utterly mad
, thought Harker.
If it even is a boy
.

“Töte mich. Bitte töte mich.”

Ellis translated the boy's low, guttural words without prompting. “Kill me,” he croaked. “Please kill me.”

“Sir?” said Kavanagh.

“Do as he asks,” said Harker.

The five men raised their rifles and pulled the triggers. The boy made no attempt to move; the lead struck him in the chest and shoulders and slammed him back against the shattered window. There was a horrible, slippery sound as a long shaft of the window frame, broken loose by the artillery fire that had robbed the church of its roof, slid wetly between the boy's shoulder blades and pierced his heart.

A smile flickered across his gore-streaked face.

Then he exploded in a thunderclap of crimson that sprayed across the ruined church, coating the five men standing among its pews.

The Special Reconnaissance Unit made its way back through no man's land, the burning church throwing orange light and sparks into the cold night air behind them.

Once they had wrapped Thorpe's body in a makeshift stretcher made from the coats of the German soldiers and carried him out of the church, Kavanagh and McDonald had gone back inside and smashed the oil lanterns on to the wooden pews; Quincey Harker had not attempted to dissuade them. The five men had said almost nothing to each other on their march back through Passchendaele village, past Crest Farm, and down the treacherous valleys of earth and wire that led them back into no man's land, their friend carried low between them. They crossed it quickly, recklessly so, and slipped back into the Allied trenches as the first grey fingers of dawn caressed the eastern horizon.

A driver was waiting for them, his uniform pressed and clean, his boots polished to mirrors; he informed them that they were expected at HQ at once. Harker made the man wait until Thorpe's body had been carefully laid on a cart and sent to the field hospital, then led his men to an idling car. They drove in silence to the grand chateau, where an adjutant showed them into Field Marshal Gough's study and closed the door.

Gough was standing behind a map of the Passchendaele battlefield. Without looking up, he addressed the squad. “Deliver your report and get the hell—”

He got no further.

Quincey Harker crossed the study in four long strides and slammed his fist into the Field Marshal's nose, breaking it audibly, splashing crimson across the map, and sending the old man stumbling against the wall, his eyes wide with shock. Harker raised his fist again, but Kavanagh caught his arm, as Potts and Ellis grabbed his shoulders and waist, and dragged him back.

“Have you lost your mind?” bellowed Gough. “I'll see you shot for this, you—”

“For what, sir?” interrupted Ellis. “I don't think even you can send a man to the firing squad without witnesses.”