No Man's land

'No man’s land; it started off as a joke with us when we arrived. 
You know the story of Ulysses and how he faced the Cyclops?
How he poked him in the eye?
“Who has done that?” screams the Cyclops.
“I have” shouted brave Ulysses.
“And what’s your name?”  Bellows the blinded titan.
“My name…” Ulysses shouts:  “…is no man!”
So of the Cyclops goes off, screaming in pain, bewailing from his rotten mouth full of tombstone teeth,  shouting at the top of his voice as blobs of blood and spittle  that “No man has taken my eye out."
But, I soon found out it was no joke.
 Not at all.
The first thing to note is the smell; for war has a smell all of its own.
There is the smell of men: a sour sweat, built up out of suffering and fear.
Then there is the damp odour of the green woollen uniform, of polished leather, of rats urine and droppings; itself a stench of decay. 
Then there is the smell of cordite, of polished brass of machine gun oil and decaying blood.
And then there is the smell of mud.
Earth overturned by mortars, by stokes, or by larger shells that have ripped holes in the land. 
I come from the North, the midlands 61st regiment 2nd South Midland brigade, to be exact. My home?  I come from the Black Country; the soil of the north is brackish and has this, soft, wet feel to it.  The soil here in Fromelle is paler in comparison:  it’s soft a tan colour that becomes a darker brown as the bombs rip it and sift it to shreds. It does not have  the oaky scent of home. Its an alien place strange to me. It’s not home.  Not here.
I'd been  in Fromelle six months then and had been stationed there since the battle of the Somme started.  My mates and me.  But it’s funny how friendships change and how people show their real faces when conflict rises and makes men out of boys. 
I joined my regiment through pals; and the man who we all looked to was Harry Pemberton.
Oh how I envied him, his confidence, the light in his pale blue eyes, the way he was with women.  I still see harry jaunting down Blackheath high street; his straw boater hat sat on his head set at  that quirky angle, the moustache the pale blue eyes. Harry exuded confidence. 
Now,  looking back to that last day before we climbed those ladders and set off towards the guns that spat ice and fire, I rembember not the confident man, but the muddy faced liar staring at me across the shored up muddy bunker, I still  hear his  bitter complaining, and know that in a tight spot he won’t look after anyone  but himself.
Then there was Jim. Yep, Jim.
Fromelle changed everything for me. And going back to that story of brave Ulysses makes me think of Jim.
The Cyclops and the rattle of German machine gunfire.
He never was a part of us pals was Jim. That is Harry, Peter, Edward Joseph and I.  Jim was an add on, "not one of us", Harry called him  and used to mock his tatty clothes and his background. Harry coming from a middle class backgound  was used to think that he was something of a man of the world, But in the trench, there is no rank between the ordinary soldiers, rank takes effect above the seargant.
 Jim had a rat like face, a  narrow, and a pointed nose, coal black hair and pale green eyes that seemed always weary. Not mirthless, just weary.  
At home, we tolerated him, because, that was what we did. Back Home Harry was the man that made us cheer.  But here, things are different.
 Jim fitted in well with the war. He even seemed to find himself amid the rats and the blood and the bombs. 
He saved my life during the early days of the Somme. I had been cought short and was relieving myself in a bush when  in the light of the moon a German soldier appeared. He looked at me squatting, attempting to take a mud and without a thought raised his rifle. I shuddered as I  thought I was going to get it. But the next moment there was a crack and the German dropped to to the floor in a heap.  Behind him grinning his quirky grin was Jim. 
"better get you pants up there is a war on you know." he said. 
If Harry  ahd been in that situation he would have run off. 
I first found out that Jim had an operation of sorts during one of our rest furloughs  from the fron line.  
I had just finished my meal in the mess tent and Jim, who was sitting across from me, asks if I want a pack of players.
Fags in the trenches were rationed, so if you liked a smoke and couldn't keep control of your ration, they’re just hard to get old of, I took the crumpled packet out of my tunic and looked into my packet of large Stubbs. 
I looked up and Jim smiled.
An hour later we were sitting almost out of sight of the narrow road to the front. I was resting my back close to a slowly blistering red painted door that was attached to a flint wall of an old farm house barn.  I had finished my second to last stub and was crumbling the fag into the dry grass and dirt. Smoke came from the grass.
It was a warm day. The sun baked my legs and shone between the trees  along the narrow path that was a constant stream of men of many nations, walking in two single lines towards and away from the near distant sounds thumping whump of bombs and the occasional  crack of mortar or machine gun fire.
The men and the horses sounded nearer than the bombs:  a clumping thud of war weary feet in a permanent rotation to and from the front. 
I looked occasionally at them, making sure my head was down. We, Jim and I had drawn special detail and that meant grave work ahead; and though we had an hour to go, if an officer saw us loitering, our C.O would have our blood.
Another thing about the trenches is the singing. I can take the bombs, the guns and even the odd mortar shell, but those bloody German songs late into the night? Christ, oh, sorry, where was I?  The flint wall? 
Well I just looked back and who should appear but a youngish lad with a nasty scar down his right cheek.
"Keep an eye out Roy” he says and then he shakes this lads hand and says “So what you go to trade?”
“Managed to get a nice scotch from the officer’s mess.”
Jim smiles.
“What you want for it?”
“The usual.”
“Fuck off, yer know how hard it is to peddle that? If I am caught-”
“-You’re not back at the front for another couple of days, and from what I hear-“
“-yeah?  Well aint that like you Jim.”
“Four packs.”
“Three”
The man with the cut paused looked up and then gave a small nod before taking Jim’s fag and silently took a drag, to sign the deal.
“Stay here.” Jim says  Then both men went inside the old flint barn and out of sight.
 I kept my head down and looked at the traffic of men.
  Back then I didn’t think of who might not come back, who was going to survive or die. It was simply a role, keeping your head down, looking after your mates and yourself, making sure your C.O was on your good side. That is the truth of the trenches. The shock of it all that comes when I was at home.  Looking at that black oil soil, breathing in that oaky scent and knowing that no one was going to shoot me gas me or blow me to bits. 
When the mind works out things. That is when the suffering starts.
First the man with the scar and then Jim came out of the barn. 
Jim had a wiry smile on his narrow face and a light shone in his eyes.  He chucked me a pack of players that I nervously stuff into my tunic pocket.
“That’s for standing duty.”  
A moment later and we were back in the line of men walking back up to camp and to our detail.
“What’s that all about?”  I recall asking and his reply was quirky:
“Stashing up for a rainy day.”
Our sergeant was a crook and a bastard. He was a Northern Irish northerner called O’Hare.  He had this gruff cracked voice that burst out of his wide mouth that contained   black and green teeth,  his cheeks were ruddy and his eyes widely set had a grey steel stare of contempt about them.
He caught us as we entered camp.
“Gentlemen it appears you are late.” He says with this fake sincerity that you know is going to have a slap in it afterwards.
“Sir I had to use the latrine sir.”
He stared at me, and I really thought he was going to have me turn back to the front.  But I knew that meant he couldn’t pull us up.
 So with his viscous stare bearing on our backs, he watched us as we joined our detail. I never forgot it.
We had walked to  the outskirts of Fromelle.
There is a line of trees, oaks and birches sliding off towards the sunset, which that day was  huge orange ball that settled in the dusk as we all looked at the scene:  
a large dug pit of brown earth the bodies and bags and bags of lime.
I recall the weight of the spade in my hand and the blisters that soon became callouses.
Around us were the dead.
The brave dead. 
Piled up, around us. Regardless of rank or of side.  The Australian khaki, the German blue grey, French Blue Serge, the British khaki; they were all rounds us.  Piled up like stacks of rotten meat.  
The balck stare from their  blank eyes. Their muddy bloody faces that spark of life, that gift that makes us alive gone.  And amongst the corpses were ghosts. I could feel them tug at me, pull me drag me breathe into my heart and want to scream into my ears. I felt their fingers scratch my hands and felt them tug at me feet as I lifted the corpses bloody and broken and placed them into the shallow grave. 
Murderers did this.  Killers did this. Not soldiers.
I heard the mocking of the crows and looked up. The sky was darkening but the bird’s wings on the night circled overhead. 
They call it a murder of crows. Were we the killers?
At that moment, burying the dead with such ignominy I have to say, that at that time, and in that place, I felt like a killer.
How did they all end up here? All alone hundreds of miles from home Separated from their ranks I have to say, I don’t know. I was and am a soldier; I don’t question the orders, regardless of what I think of them. I carry them out and then think about the decision afterwards.
Fromelle was just one place, a part of a huge plan that no one as I stand here  really know the answer to.
Perhaps better men than me will be able to put a reason to it with time. But that is this war.  There is no good or bad, just death and the death of many many men. 
I recall lifting them in one at a time. Pulling them together, feeling their cold skin, covering them with lime.
Watching the white powder glisten in the blood.  
I found myself Coughing  then fighting the urge  to gag from the stench of decay as the pale dust as it blew up in the evening sun. 
I looked at Jim and he looked at me. 
We both thought it, and our eyes welled with the immensity of it.
This war was never going to end.  
It took an hour or two. I can’t recall.  I know one thing, when the job was done, you could walk by,  and never realise that underneath your feet were hands and fingers and bodies and eyes weeping flesh slowly rotting in the earth.
Jim died a month later in no man’s land. I was behind him. I saw through my gas mask amid the shells cracking the soil. Through the pale smoke I saw his body buckle and break  as the bullets from the German machine gun cut into him. No mans land is not like Ulysees  at all, and its  the Cyclops who holds the gun and spits its fury at the poor men who fall. 
 I ereall I gasped as I saw his body buckle and then and there I realised the truth of those men in that unmarked grave.  I charged over  as bullets flew  about me I screamed my silence throuigh my mask as I fought through the barbs of wire, but then I was hit in the right arm five times.
They had to cut it off. I don’t remember that at all.
So they brought me home.  That was all two years ago
So they  brought me home. I hear the war is nearly over now.  They are calling it the "the war to end all wars"  perhaps it will be, though soemthing tells me, its the tip of the iceberg.
Harry managed to survive, but he is the only one of our pals that has. I hear from him in letters and post cards. He wants to meet up.  But I doubt I will. after all I hate boater hats.