“It’s a bloody good trench that is, solid built and well cammed, with good arcs of fire!”
Arnie shook his head sympathetically.
“It’s facing in the wrong direction Sarn’t Osgood, and as for the shelter bay entrance, well… ” Like an art critic rubbishing a piece of work for reasons he felt should be obvious, he threw up his arms in despair.
Oz was incredulous.
“Waddaya mean its facing the wrong direction?” striding around to stand beside Arnie he peered at the scene north. “And what’s this shit about the entrance… where else would ya put it, ya soft twat!”
“It coddles the negative energy and deters the positive… ” Arnie ducked to avoid the Geordies backhand blow.
“You Texican wanker… you had me going, there!”
Colin removed a sachet of non-dairy whitening and then replaced it in his webbing; fishing into the depths of his bergen for a small can of Nestles evaporated milk instead. They needed a treat under the circumstances, he decided.
The field telephone at the end of the firebay buzzed and Colin lifted the handset, listening for a moment before replacing it with a grunt. He tugged on a length of communications cord and when a face appeared over the parapet of the nearest trench to theirs he laid a pair of extended fingers against his left bicep, summoning the section commander who resided in that fighting position. When the Lance Corporal arrived Colin nodded downhill. “The Q Blokes got a ration and ammo replen, take four blokes and play grocer, Corporal Bethers.”
The NCO doubled away and Colin shouted after him. “And follow the track plan!”
The water came to a boil and Colin served up a mug of strong, sweet tea, NATO style, which was handed around the trio while they talked over local issues.
L/Cpl Bethers and his fatigue party came and went, dropping off grenades, smoke, shermoulies, small arms ammunition, compo and topping up their water bottles from a jerry can.
Colin had started smoking again a week before, which made the three of them in deep trouble once their wives found out, unless of course they could break the habit before crossing the thresholds of their various homes once more. He lit up a cigarette and took a drag on it, enjoying the sensation.
“Two’s up.” Arnie said, the British Army slang came naturally to him now, and Colin passed it across, sharing as requested.
The explosion came as the American exhaled and was in the process of passing the ‘fag’ to Oz. The cigarette went spinning away as he rolled over the parapet to join the two Guardsmen now crouching down at the bottom of the firebay.
Screaming came from over to their left along with desperate shouts of “Medic!” but there were no further detonations.
Arnie and Oz left the trench, crawling rapidly over the muddy earth toward the cries for help whilst Colin yelled for the platoon to stand-to.
All about the area weapons were cocked and shouts echoed the CSMs order to stand-to. It was a time of confusion, when no one knew what the hell was going on but all wanted to. In answer to Colin Probert’s call for a medic to the company CP by field telephone, he immediately received a demand for information on the cause of the explosion, was it an attack, was it a mine or a booby trap? But all he could say in reply was to ‘wait out’.
This was the part of a platoon commander’s job that he liked the least, relying on others to do what his instincts urged him to do, find the problem and report back.
It could have been no more than a minute or so before one of L/Cpl Bethers fatigue men sprinted over to him, but it seemed an age. The young Guardsman was not one of the original battalion and had seen little blood and gore up to that moment. He was breathless as he arrived, his face pale having seen the first most terrible thing to occur in his eighteen years.
“Sir, its Robertson and Aldridge… a grenade went off, we’d just replened them and something must have gone wrong… the RSM and Sarn’t Osgood is workin’ on Robbo, but Aldridge is, is… ..!”
Colin’s stomach sank at the names of the Tyne and Weir romantics, and cutting him short he ordered him into the trench to stand by the field phone. Robertson and Aldridge were members of a group at risk of becoming an endangered species, the original members of the battalion.
Hauling himself out of the trench he grabbed up his rifle and left at a run. He could see a cluster of men bent over watching something, and as he drew near he snarled at them to do as they’d been damn well told and stand to. They scattered away to their own trenches and Colin reached the object of their interest.
The smell of high explosive hung in the air about the fighting position. Torn and ripped sandbags that had lined the parapet of the trenches firebay lay scattered about, the contents bleeding out into the wet ground. The leaves of bushes that had provided the natural cover growing around the position were splashed with blood, and something red and pink, wrapped in shredded camouflage material, was draped over the branch of a tree just behind the trench.
Robertson had been pulled from the trench and laid on the ground beside it so that he could be worked on. L/Cpl Bethers was elevating the remains of what had been an arm, and pressing down hard as he applied a field dressing to the end of the foreshortened limb. The dressing had already reached its limit, it was bright red and blood fell from it at a steady rate.
Oz was knelt down applying a dressing to Robertson’s chest, and it too was soaked with arterial blood. Discarded wound dressing wrappers littered the muddy ground around the young soldier, ground that wore a growing dark stain.
Stepping up to Bethers side, Colin put the heel of his boot in Robertson’s armpit, and bore down on it to compress the artery that had been severed further along, above the soldiers elbow.
It had to have hurt, and Colin looked at his Guardsman intending to speak some words of reassurance, but Robertson’s lower jaw, nose, eyes and most of the soft tissue of his face were missing. What remained showed no visible reaction.
Arnie arrived back at a sprint, having gone for more dressings and encountered the medical officer already enroute. A pair of the battalion medics accompanied the officer with a stretcher and Bergens loaded with the tools of their trade. A medic relieved Colin and Bethers of their task with the pressure point and wound, and the Warrant Officer with nothing else he could do to save his soldier tried to discover what had happened in the first place.
The three remaining Guardsmen of Bethers replenishment party were with their small stock of stores at the next trench, where the trio lay in all round defence. Hand signals summoned one of the Guardsmen to his side, where Colin spoke to the rifleman briefly before sending him to the company commanders CP with a sitrep.
“Okay Corporal, any ideas as to what happened?”
Aged only twenty, L/Cpl Bethers had that jump on maturity that servicemen possess, and which is absent from civilians of the same age group. He already had an opinion as to what had occurred after Aldridge and Robertson had been resupplied.
“Sir, we gave them the same as we gave you. A hundred rounds of ball, fifty linked, one shermouli, one smoke, one frag and its fuse assembly, their water and rat packs.” He nodded towards the body. “Aldridge was like a zombie, all fingers and thumbs, and he dropped the body of the frag when he was trying to screw the fuse in.”
Colin stepped to the edge of the trench and looked down, the sight that met him was not pleasant, but Bethers was still talking.
“I bollocked him and told him to clean it before trying again, and then we moved on to Chedrick and Pitchman’s hole.”
Colin could picture it in his mind’s eye; the body of the grenade landing in the mud at the bottom of the trench, the tired Aldridge squatting down, retrieving it and only doing half a job of ensuring the fuse chamber was cleaned of the dirt. It was dark down there so he wouldn’t have been able to see the muck that had got inside, instead of standing up in the light to check it properly. The assembly would have met resistance as he tried to screw it in, but the tired brain would just command the hands and fingers to apply more pressure.