Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? (7 page)

An hour later the section holding the bridge was relieved and driven about a mile to the far side of town. The first thing Horace thought about was the hunger gnawing away at his stomach, and the second was sleep. The sergeant pointed across the field to an old dilapidated-looking farmhouse three hundred yards away.

‘You can kip in there, lads. It’s been checked out, not too clean but plenty of beds and running water. I think the present owners fucked off a few weeks ago when Jerry started flexing his muscles.’

‘Any grub?’ asked Horace.

The sergeant smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ll find something, Jim. There’s a few tins lying around the cupboards and vegetables in the fields. I’ve even seen a few hens scraping about if you’re fast on your feet.’

Fred rubbed at his stomach while his tongue caressed and moistened his lips. ‘Chicken and roast potatoes, lads. Sounds good to me.’

‘A little wine perhaps to wash it down with…’ Horace smiled. It was a nice thought; there could be a small wine cellar and an oil stove to cook on, maybe a few pots and pans. As they set off along the tree-lined, pot-holed track leading up to their sanctuary, he listened to the artillery shells in the distance. Perhaps he was mistaken but they seemed to be getting a little louder.

The first shell exploded without warning. It had been fired from the west by the French Allies. The blast, no more than 30 yards away, knocked the men off their feet. Horace groaned as he was slammed into a tree. He lay still, shouted at the rest of his section and asked if everyone was OK.

Fred rose to his knees. ‘Everyone’s fine, I think. No damage done.’

‘Get down, you idiot,’ Horace screamed as the second shell whistled overhead. It exploded harmlessly behind the farmhouse. For the next 20 minutes the forward section of the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicesters lay face down in the French dirt as artillery shells rained down around them. Aberfield confirmed the shells were coming from the French lines. Friendly fire. The phrase had been coined in the First World War. Grossly incompetent generals directing fire into an area where their own troops were. Lack of communication, trigger happy, friendly fire. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the section were wiped out by the very country they were there to protect?

The men could do nothing; their fate was in their allies’ hands. Trees were flattened, the fields and forests all around pounded relentlessly. The noise was unbearable and Horace stiffened up as he heard every whistle from every shell overhead and wondered if one of them had the name Joseph
Horace Greasley etched into its casing. It was the nearest he had ever come to death, and the sheer destructive powers of the big guns frightened him. He had never witnessed it close at hand before. He had seen an occasional destroyed vehicle and of course the pictures on Pathé News, but nothing had prepared him for the immense power of destruction he was witnessing first hand. Aberfield lay just in front of him, his hands covering his head. Horace sought a tree trunk for protection, figuring out that the hundred-year-old tree would absorb most of the blast of any shell landing on the opposite side of the field. To a man the whole section curled up in balls as tightly as they could or pressed themselves deeper into the contours of the land and prayed that it would all be over soon.

And then it came. The shell with Greasley on it.

Horace heard the faint whoosh in the distance; his mouth was dry in an instant and as the whoosh turned into a whistle it was louder than anything he had heard previously. The other men sensed it too. This shell was heading their way. ‘Take cover!’ screamed someone behind him as it came ever closer. The noise was unbearable; the shell was coming straight for them. Horace covered his head and cursed for mercy as it exploded in the middle of the track. He remembered the noise as a huge fireball plumed 30 feet into the air and then a split second later – darkness.

Horace heard the groans at first. He had no idea how long he’d been out. It was silent now apart from a few birds singing. Those birds again, thought Horace. How do they know when to start singing? How do they know when to stop?

Most of the men were on their feet. Some attended to their stricken comrades and applied bandages to head wounds and an odd broken bone. No one lay motionless that he could see. Miraculously they had all survived. They had made it.

Horace tried to get to his feet. He couldn’t. He tried again
lifting his body from his hips, aware of a hot sensation in the small of his back as he attempted to push his backside up into the air. Nothing. He couldn’t move. His back was stuck fast as if a huge weight was pressing down from above; his ammunition pouches bit into his chest. His worst nightmare, a broken back, life confined to a wheelchair. But somehow he sensed that was not the case. His back felt fine. He wiggled his toes. Fine. He bent his left leg from the knee so his heel pressed into one of his buttocks. It worked perfectly. The brain had sent the signal all the way down the spinal column and the leg had obeyed the order. Nevertheless he was still scared.

‘Help me, Fred! I can’t move.’

His comrade walked over to where Horace lay and his mouth fell open in amazement.

‘Fuck me, Jim, you’ve been lucky.’

‘Lucky? I… what?’

Fred held out a hand, which Horace reached for and Fred dragged him out from beneath the stricken tree. A piece of artillery casing an inch thick, the size of a car tyre, had almost split the tree in two, embedding itself seven or eight inches deep into the trunk. The protruding bit of smouldering red hot metal had entered the tree parallel with Horace’s back, a fraction of an inch above it. It was this piece of French shrapnel that had temporarily disabled Horace. Fred shook his head in disbelief.

‘Two inches lower, Jim, and it would have cut you in half.’

The enormity of just how close Horace had come to death sank in and his breathing became laboured. He sat for a few minutes in silence, staring at the broken tree and the shell casing. He removed his webbing belt and his hands instinctively massaged his kidney area. He’d had a close shave, of that there was no doubt. He took a deep breath and
eased himself to his feet. The drama was over, time to put it to the back of his mind and think of more important matters, like food.

Twenty-nine men were grateful for an almost uninterrupted night’s sleep under a sturdy roof for the first time in a week, and each fell asleep on a full belly. They’d managed to catch two hens that that they’d cooked and shared between them. There had been eggs in abundance and their feast had started with a makeshift egg mayonnaise minus the mayonnaise but with onions and chopped tomatoes from the fields. The main course was a type of chicken stew. Several tins of unlabelled green beans went into a huge pan along with the chicken, salt, pepper and sweet corn. An unlimited supply of boiled potatoes filled the men’s stomachs to capacity and although they didn’t manage to find a wine cellar, the fresh water from a well at the rear of the house tasted as good as anything they could have imagined. Horace fell asleep content. It was amazing the effect a full belly had on morale. He remembered an expression by a French general from long ago, ‘An army marches on its stomach.’

It was around six in the morning when Horace awoke. He didn’t know what had woken him first: thoughts of more food, Eva’s lithe body or the sound of more artillery fire less than a few miles away. Outside, Sergeant Major Aberfield stood with a corporal and two or three men studying the sweeping corn fields to the east. Plumes of smoke rose to accompany the dull thud of the gunfire in the distance. The stems of the corn swayed gently in the breeze, a wallowing sea of yellow and green dancing to the tune of the wind.

But then something strange. The cornfield was moving but the timing was wrong. No longer did it flow back and forth like a wave, it, well… sort of jerked. A flash of grey. Aberfield had spotted it too and pointed open-mouthed as the helmets
came into view. The men froze for a second as now the torsos of at least a dozen Germans became visible. They marched in a straight line, making no attempt to conceal themselves.

‘Fuck me!’ shouted Corporal Graham as he made a sprint to the farmhouse for his rifle. Horace didn’t panic; he knew exactly what to do. The Bren gun stood poised, unmanned, at the door of a small barn 20 yards away, and by sheer coincidence primed and pointing in the right direction. Just what were the Germans playing at? He’d take most of them out before they even knew what was happening. He covered the 20 yards like an Olympic sprinter, Aberfield following in his wake. He reached for the tripod of the gun.

‘Take your hands off the gun,’ Aberfield said, pointing his revolver at Horace’s temple.

It wasn’t happening… it couldn’t be happening.

‘Hands off the gun!’ he repeated.

‘What are you doing, sir, for Christ’s sake? They’re lined up like sitting ducks!’ Horace screamed, shaking his head, unsure what exactly was beginning to unfold. The sergeant major’s pistol trembled in his right hand and Horace had no doubts whatsoever that he would pull the trigger. Aberfield’s left hand went into his pocket and slowly withdrew a white handkerchief.

‘No!’ Horace howled out. ‘No…’

The handkerchief fluttered in the breeze as Sergeant Major Aberfield held it up high and not one shot was exchanged between the section of the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicesters and the advance party of the German 154th Infantry Regiment.

As Horace marched into Cambrai he had never felt at such low ebb. His feet ached, his stomach groaned and he thought of his family back home. He thought of that Christmas Day and the robin, he thought of birdsong and long hot summers
and the smell of fresh bread and wet summer grass. He was lost in his thoughts, desperately trying to project his mind away from the living hell he was looking at.

At least ten thousand Allied prisoners of war were packed into the medieval town square, surrounded by German guards. Night was just drawing in; the day was grey and bleak. The prisoners’ faces portrayed sadness – all hope had gone, they were united in misery. Some were bloodied and broken, some clearly dying on their feet. French citizens stood among them, persuaded by the occupying forces to surrender without resistance, and for that they would be rewarded with jobs in munitions factories in Germany.

They had given up their country with barely a shot fired.

Horace was overawed by the sheer scale of the German presence, of their sleek, well maintained vehicles, far superior to those in which his section had travelled the breadth of France. They were better equipped, their uniforms of better quality, and a field kitchen had been set up in the entrance to the square as sausages, bread and steaming hot cups of coffee were handed out to their smiling, well fed faces. They were organised, battle hardened and more experienced.

They were also brutal and desensitised. The POWs were instructed to lie down where they stood in preparation for the night ahead. No tents, no huts, not even a blanket, just the uniforms they stood up in. A German soldier lunged at a poor unfortunate who was just a little slow obeying the order. He was dragged out of the main body of prisoners and attacked with rifle butts by half a dozen guards. The furious assault lasted no more than half a minute as the sickening thud of the rifles split his skull open and poured his blood onto the already damp cobbles of the square. The dazed man, barely conscious, looked up at the officer standing over him,
pleading with terror-filled eyes. He knew what fate awaited him. The German officer smiled as he withdrew his pistol from the leather holster at his hip and pointed the gun at the head of the prisoner. In an act of unbridled cruelty the officer delayed the inevitable execution. The man begged and pleaded and shook his head and the tears poured down his cheeks for half a minute as he lay pained and bloodied on the ground. Then the officer’s smile disappeared as he moved a step closer. Horace closed his eyes a split second before the shot rang out and when he opened them the man lay motionless, his eye socket a bloody empty hole.

Just after the town clock struck midnight the rain started. As if it couldn’t get any worse, Horace thought. Within an hour he lay shivering in the cold night air, completely saturated. Incredibly Horace actually slept through the night but awoke the next morning to find himself lying in a channel of water running down from the streets that led into the square.

The clock struck seven and a volley of shots burst from an officer’s pistol. Collectively the whole square understood them as a command to rise. Some never made it; they’d died from their untreated injuries. Incredibly a few slept through the noise, from sheer physical exhaustion. They were unceremoniously executed by enthusiastic guards, as if taking part in a bizarre sport.

An SS officer stood on the steps of the town hall.

‘For you the war is over,’ he shouted. ‘You are prisoners of war, prisoners of the glorious German nation.’

He rambled on for another ten minutes, enjoying the power he yielded over the assembled masses, but whatever he said Horace didn’t hear; he was thinking about crispy bacon and fried bread, an egg lightly cooked and hot, oversweet tea. The unmistakable aroma of cooking sausages wafted around the
square as at least 50 guards stood patiently in line for their morning rations. They smoked, laughed and talked as if they had not a care in the world.

Ernie Mountain had slept alongside his friend for warmth and the two boys from Ibstock stood talking as the early morning sun, combined with their body heat, began to thaw their bones. A little later steam started to rise from the uniforms of ten thousand wretched souls, making a bizarre viewing spectacle. The German guards stood in shop doorways and on the town hall stairs, grinning and pointing at the thousands of smoking, smouldering prisoners as if they were about to burst on fire at any moment.

‘Look at those fuckers,’ Ernie said, tugging at Horace’s damp uniform sleeve. He was pointing to a group of French prisoners feeding from what looked like a small leather suitcase. They sat on a small embankment on the outskirts of the square.

‘Hungry cunts, eh?’

Horace nodded.