“Do you see where I’m going with this? I can’t help but keep thinking about all of that. What if I didn’t have a family back home to cry for me? Who would cry for me then? Nobody!” He sighs and throws his arms into the air. “I can’t explain this well enough. I want to cry for that poor Jerry sod over there because maybe, just maybe, nobody else will. But war is no place for such humanity. War is fought for humanity, not with it. I suppose I just want to remember what I’m fighting for out there, you know?”
He sighs again, “The saddest part about all of this is that it doesn’t matter. For all the times I wrote down names in my notebook, or said prayers on my rosary for myself, my company, my family, and my enemies, it still doesn’t matter. I remember how it happened, but I try so hard to forget. I had just reloaded my Enfield and popped out to take a shot. I heard the sergeant shouting something or another and men dying and screaming shells and guns roaring over it all. I remember looking down my sights and taking a bit longer than I should have. I remember crimson splattering everywhere before me and then I couldn’t see anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. There wasn’t pain. I couldn’t feel. Everything faded away. They told me that there’s a light, but it’s only dark. It’s only dark and it’s cold; so cold. I fell back into the water with Wolsey.
“I died that day. October 12th, 1917, the Battle of Passchendaele. I took a rifle round straight to the head. The bullet went right under my helmet and killed me near-instant.”
Remorse fills the tears he cries. “Now I’m here. I’m forever here on the plains of Passchendaele. We wound up winning that battle but I can’t help but feeling that I died in vain. You know when you look at it, every last man who has ever died in any war dies in vain. I’m not saying they aren’t heroes or whatnot, but I am saying that their lives were wasted. Look at me. I could have lived past nineteen and led some kind of life, but instead I died for a war that we still can’t understand exactly what it was about. War is an atrocity. It shouldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen at all, but it does, and men like me die over it. Some of us die horrible, agonizing deaths with mustard gas or a bleed, some of us are lucky like me and die fast. But we’re dead. We’re proud to be dead because we died for our countries.
“The question that bothers me though, ‘did we have to?’ Wars happen and none of them are ever for the right reason. The good guys fight to stop the bad guys, but the bad guys always think they’re the good guys. I don’t know. It’s irritating to think about that, but the point is that war is inevitable, but in good theory, we could have prevented it and nobody would have to die. I could be alive and probably have a wife and some kids by now.
“But some politicians out there decided it was time for young people to die. If there was any justice in the world, the politicians who damn us would take up rifles and fight with us, but there isn’t justice. There are only dead men lying in flooded foxholes.”
He puts out his cigarette and stands again. He looks out onto the horizon and takes a deep breath. His is time is short, so he finishes, “Don’t let people forget what happened here. Don’t let the world forget places likes Passchendaele. Maybe one day people will learn the hell that happens. I know they won’t. It’s like this war, ‘the war to end all wars,’ which is the biggest load of shit I’ve heard all my life. There will always be another war. It’s a battle that’s always going to be fought and never won. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try though, because I’d like to believe that my life is worth trying for.”
The Ghost of Passchendaele sighs one last breath before fading back into forgotten memory.
“The Ghost of Passchendale” is dedicated to the memory of the late Harry Patch, whose life spanned greater than a century before telling his story of what happened at that harrowed field. He passed away in July of 2009. True memory of the battle dies with him. Harry Patch was the last survivor of Passchendaele. God rest his soul. God rest all the souls who saw even a glimpse of those horrors.
The Whisper
There are no marksmen without superstition. We all have something, whether it be a rosary or a rabbit’s foot. Some say a prayer, some load their bullets a certain way, and a few even abandon a perfect shot because something quite ludicrous is off. You will hear from all of us that our superstitions matter and, as such, you may wish to write me off, but I assure you that my own superstition is very real and she makes all of the difference.
I saw her the first time I killed. In a bell tower at the south side of Amsterdam, I hid with my sergeant, Gregor Schalkwijk, the fat old man who trained our cell in guerrilla warfare. He kept us wound tightly and his berating never ended, but we respected him. Below, about a hundred yards away, marched a small patrol of Nazi soldiers led by a youthful lieutenant: my target. I thought of my target as nothing more than the pheasants I hunted growing up. His head was truly no larger than the birds and it would not fly away, but this did little to cool my nerves. My crosshairs trembled over my target.
“Breathe,” Schalkwijk whispered. “Your time comes. Breathe. Let it come to you. Breathe.”
Standing behind my target I saw a young woman, a girl. She was a young woman, not a child. She was out of place, but also she was not. She wore dark clothes matching her black hair. At my prey, she stared in just the way I felt. She waited. She looked up at me and she nodded. I knew. I exhaled and pressed the trigger. The rifle roared. I did not see where the bullet went. I opened my eyes again and watched the soldiers scramble, their lifeless lieutenant bleeding on the cobbled street.
Schalkwijk exclaimed, “Good shooting!”
I lay frozen, scanning the road for the girl. My suppose was that she had run away, but I was wrong. She knelt beside the lieutenant and held his dead hand. I did not understand.
One of the Germans pointed right up at our position and shouted.
“We must leave!”
I did not want to. I wanted to see the girl. Nevertheless, I dropped my rifle and crawled away with Schalkwijk. Using a rope tied the night before, we rappelled down the far side of the tower and slipped away into the city.
I saw her again for my second kill. In a mill outside of the city, I hid alone in wait for a Nazi patrol. A field of tulips and shell holes lay before me. The contrast of hellish war and natural, colorful beauty confused my senses. The pandemonium reminded me of her; a beautiful girl surrounded by evil and death. But I focused on my task. My prey was to march two-hundred yards away perpendicular to my shot. My target was their sergeant, a tubby man who frequented the bars around Amsterdam. We knew him for his outspoken hatred of my home.
For two hours I waited, anticipation looming over me. It was not for the coming kill or the escape, but because I knew, somehow, that I would see her again. And I did.
The patrol of nine men came. Their sergeant marched behind them. I put him in my scope and there she was. I did not see her come; she was simply there. Her shadowed presence and noir beauty contrasted greatly the glowing pastel of the flowers around her. She stared at me stolidly and nodded. I fired and my target dropped. I found her again. She had moved to the dead man’s corpse and whispered something to him. The Nazis scrambled. I wanted to watch, but I had to leave. I took my rifle and ran; nothing but the girl on my mind.