The Thing Itself Read Free

scrubland behind the canal. It was misty. There was some heat gusting from the blazing barges on the canal – we’d set them alight so they couldn’t be used for makeshift bridges across the canal.
    We were told we were going to engage the enemy the next day. That night our morale was good. Nevertheless, everybody wrote their notes to their loved ones back home. Gave them to friends, stuck them on the end of their bayonets with their wedding rings.
    Ted spent some time beside me writing a note in pencil. When he’d done, he folded it round a small photo. He held out the package to me.
    â€˜Just in case.’
    â€˜What if I get a packet?’ I said.
    â€˜I’ll carry yours for you.’
    â€˜I didn’t mean that. I’ve no one to write to.’
    Ted proffered the package again. I shook my head.
    â€˜I mean who’ll deliver your message if I get a packet? Best you keep it with you. I promise that if I come through and you don’t I’ll get it from you.’
    Ted tucked it into one of his breast pockets.
    â€˜Fair enough. You sure there’s no one you want to write to?’
    â€˜Nobody. I told you. I’ve been orphaned for five years and there’s no sweetheart with her nose pressed to the windowpane pining for my return.’
    At six a.m. on Sunday, 22nd August, the bells of Nimy church rang for mass. Smoke was coming from the chimney of a cottage about a hundred yards away and it was so quiet I could hear someone riddling the fire and adding more coal.
    At nine a.m. the Germans started shelling. It lasted an hour but they couldn’t get the range. All the shells fell short, into the canal. Made our ears ring, though. We were waiting for our guns to reply but they didn’t.
    The German infantry started forward soon after, a solid mass of grey. It gave me a jolt to see them coming, roaring and bellowing. My arms were shaking as I raised my rifle but then I realized we couldn’t miss. They came over a bank directly in front of us and as soon as they topped it we let them have it. The range was seventy yards, so we were firing our fifteen rounds a minute at them point-blank.
    They outnumbered us three to one but it was exhilarating to see what kind of devastation concentrated firepower can wreak. Horrible too, by Jove. Legs, arms and heads were flying all over the place. One minute the Hun was there, the next they were all dead. We absolutely smashed them.
    I glanced at Ted, Jim and Jack beside me. Their eyes were burning as bright as mine.
    I heard later the Hun was convinced we’d mowed them down with machine-gun fire but it was our musketry training coming through.
    Then they got their machine guns into action and at that distance we were now the sitting ducks. We had to get out of it pretty sharp. That’s when Jack and Ted copped it. I didn’t see Jack die but Ted was right next to me.
    One minute we were clambering up the canal side together, the next he’d fallen across me, his brains blown out through the back of his helmet. I scrabbled in his pocket, taking out the few things I thought he’d want his wife to have in addition to the package and his wedding ring. I found another piece of paper with his home address on it.
    I looked at what was left of his face. From human being to lifeless thing in an instant.
    Jim went ten minutes later. I dug in his pocket for Jack’s stuff and his own.
    I had a warm time of it the rest of that day. There were exploding shells, shrapnel in the air, machine-gun bullets. Eventually, German buglers sounded the ceasefire. Then, drifting down the lines, we could hear German voices singing ‘
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles
’. Made my blood boil.
    There was no respite that night. The guns pounded away. Villages and farms were on fire in front of us, and behind us factories and towns blazed with light.
    The next five days seemed to last five years as we retreated under the