Cyclops part 1

You know the story of Ulysses?  
How he’d  faced the Cyclops?
How he’d  poked him in the eye?
“who's   done that?” Screams the Cyclops!  His face all red with rage  his mouth all tombstone teeth and beard spittle, as he  staggers about scratching his fingers against the  dirt walls of the cave.  “I have!” Shouts the brave Ulysses in return.  
“An’ what’s your name  then?”  Bellows the blinded Titan.
“My name…” Ulysses shouts:  “…is no man!”
So off the Cyclops goes, blindly staggerin’ in pain,  bewailing  that “No man has taken me eye out.” You see the irony is  palpable.  Fromelle  taught me that. 

My War?   What was it like?  The   first thing that I remember lookin’ back now,  is the awful smell… for  that  war ‘ ad  a smell all of its own…There  was  the smell of unwashed  men: a sour  stink;  built up out of suffering and fear. Then there was the damp odour of that  itchy  green woollen uniform, the stench of ammonia from  rats urine and faeces from rats  droppings; itself a stench of decay.  There was the stench of trench-foot:  Just rotting limbs in wet leather boots. The stench of of bad breath and of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.  All blended with the smell of explosives:  Of cordite, of polished brass,  and of machine gun oil.  Most of all, there is the smell unique to war:  the smell coagulatin’ blood in stagnant water.  It mixed  with the rich smell of the overturned earth.  Earth ripped apart  by mortars, by stokes, or by larger shells that have re shaped the land and turned  the trees into splinters. Then there is the  sights  if the dugouts  lines an lines of mud lined water filled trenches, whose sides were shore up with rusted corrugated iron; an’ whose floor was made up of busted  blanks of wood.  The dugouts were deep.  We were like moles there, scurryin’ around in the near dark warming ourselves as best we could.  The trenches worked on a rotation basis; so the trenches themselves weren’t our ‘omes. That were our tents  quarter mile back. To best describe it, is like sayin’  8 hours of sheer terror followed by 8 hours of utter boredom.  If  your luck was in.                      My battalion? 
            I was in  the 61st regiment 2^nd west  Midland brigade- based from  Dudly; a town situated in  the heart of the  Black Country.  The Black country, if you don’t  know   It gets its name from the industrial mills that turned morning sky into night during the great industrial revolution, that made a few rich and more people poorer than ever.   Some don’t know that you see. 
             See that  picture there?  That’s  us.. the fella in the middle of the front row? That’s me… I   joined my regiment through  the Pals and the biggest  Pal:  the one  who we all looked to;  that  was Harry Pemberton… but… you know... it’s funny how friendship's change… how people show their real faces when  the cyclops  comes.  For  the  Cyclops likes to feed on boys;  it don’t turn them into men.  No. Harry Pemberton, Ohhhh how I envied him.  The light in his pale blue eyes, the way he was with women.  Now…On good days…in my mind’s eye  I still, still see that Harry, jaunting down Blackheath high street.  His, hiss-straw boater, sat on his head,  set at that quirky angle,  to hide that ginger crop  he hated so much.  I remember his  shaped  moustache,  above those  sardonic  thin lips; But above all,  I remember that sense  confidence he had.
              That’s on good days. 
               On bad days, when I hear the blasting bombs,   an’ in my minds eye  feel the ground shake;  I don’t see  that confident man. I see how the cyclops  remade Harry Pemberton.  How it had  paled his  his skin;  drawn it;  mottled, muddied  and sunken it .  I see  his   near  feral  eyes, nervously  glitterin’  in near buried  dark sockets, as he stands by the ladder, quaking….waiting…waiting fo’ the whistle to take us over  the top.
                On really bad days…when I’m back there… when the whine of the bombs shake the gound;  when the man scream in my  ears, when the room shakes.  When ghosts with torn faces scream at me with...  It's  his voice… his  voice…I hear  across the shored up muddy bunker. I hear  the he why me, the   bitter complaining.  I hear the  pleading, and see his eyes filled with  terror  as I see  him  thinking about  doing  anything  but climbing  that ladder….and -and  I know…I know…  that if we were in a tight spot,  Harry wouldn’t  look after anyone  but himself.   You can’t be like that in the war.  When you face the cyclops, you can't  face it alone.  We are not all Ulysses. were men.                   Not myths.
              Then there was  Jack…Yep… Jack Wattly  his name was. He never was a part of us pals was Jack. Jack was anadd on, "not one of us", ‘arry called him.  I recall ‘ow  ‘arry  used to mock his tatty clothes an’ his background. Yer see, Harry coming from a middle class background,  used to think that he was something of a man of the world, and that meant he ‘ad aa dislike of the likes of Jack from the start.  At  home, Jack battled from job to job. Unwanted ,unwelcome. Disowned; many were the times ee’d ask if I know of any positions at the mill goin’ and I did try once or twice. But Harry,  he’d  made it clear that he wasn’t welcome, with us I mean. 
               I recall that Jack  had a rat like face. You know,  narrow,  with a pointed nose an’ thin narrow lips.  He also had  thick  mound  of glossy  wavy  coal black hair and pale green eyes that seemed always  this side of weary. Not mirthless… or sneaky… just weary.  That was Jack.  The home lad,  But  the Cyclops  made  Jack.  For jack knew , He  knew that the trenches made us all equal. There were no airs of graces, just us men an fear an’ the bombs. But though Jack was no Ulyseess, I coul trust him, especially after he saved my life. 
               It was like this: It was early days in the Somme.  The trenches hadn’t been  fully dug,  an  many soldiers helped the  scurryin’  Chinks  dig out the lines, while  offish duty battalions   were posted on lookout.  I'd  been caught short and was taking a mud in a bush;  when,  in the light of the full  moon… a German soldier  appeared between the treeline.  He looked at me squatting. His eyes cold with fear. Without a thought, he raised his rifle.  I shuddered as I thought I was going to cop a packet. But the next moment, there was a “crack”  and the German dropped to to the floor in   a heap.  I'd never seen a dead man before that day.
Behind him…  grinning his quirky grin was Jack."better get your  pants up! There is a war on you know!"  he said, as he darted off into the bushes again.
               That was Jack all over, and that was the difference between Jack an Harry. If Harry had been in that situation, if he’d  seen the-the German, sneak up he’d  have run off  an I’d be dead.  That’s what  the cyclops  does to people you see .  It turns them, It makes monsters out of all of us…It doesn’t make men… It devours them.
              I first found out that Jack had an operation, as  he called it,  was  during  one of our rest furloughs  from the front line. I had just finished my  lunch:  soft  boiled  potato  an overdone greasy cabbage and I sat in the mess tent, pouring  over which  of me fags I was going to  smoke, when   jack,   who was sitting across from me- asks me  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, you were fucked .   I  remember   looking  at the large stubbs an thinkin’ im fooked . I looked up an’  I must ‘ave had a face on me, as Jack smiled.
            An hour later we were ‘bout a quarter- mile away,  sitting almost out of full sight of the  dirt track road that led  to the front.
             It was a warm day an   I was restin’  with  my back leanin’ on a  a slowly blistering red painted door that was attached to what was left of an  old flint wall farm house barn.  I had finished my second to last stub and was crumbling the fag  into the dry grass and  dirt.  I recall the blue Smoke came from the green grass in spirals.  The sun  baked my legs , it  shone just over  the treeline to the west  where the dirt road  led a a constant stream of men of walking in two single lines.              The barn  was still intact; which was  odd.  I could smell, the old crop an old an decomposing  droppings  as I leant back agauns the wooden door.  But  the relief for not bein at the front, well it was palpable.
                  Despite being almost hid from the track to the front,  I could hear  the  distant sounds  of bombs and the occasional  crack of mortar or machine gun fire, it mingled with the closer trumpin’ clump of soldiers boots and the neigh of the war horses…the horses… Another thing about the trenches is fuckin’  singing. I can take the bombs, the guns,  but those bloody German songs late into the night? Christ,  alive man!  Oh, sorry, where was I?   Oh, yes, the flint wall?
                 I recall someone standin’ in my  shadow  an  opened an  eye, to see what was goin’ on  and this  youngish lad with a nasty scar down his right cheek appears.  Jack oo was sittin next to me say’s  "Keep an eye out Roy” then Jack gets  up  he says and then he shakes this lads hand and says “So what you go to trade?” he asks 
               “-Managed to get a nice scotch from the officer’s mess.” was the reply.  i remember Jack smiled at that. 
“-What you want for it?” he asks 
“-The usual.” was the sardonic reply. The man with the scar laughed hard. 
“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 Jack. always in the know. 
“-come on don’t be cunt.”
 The man with the scar sighed at that and shrugged his shoulders “three  packs.”
“four” Jack came back quickly.
The man with the cut paused looked up and then gave a small nod before taking Jacks  fag and silently took a drag, to sign the deal.
“Stay here.” Jack says  Then both men went inside the old flint barn and out of sight.
 I kept my head down.
                 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’s  the truth of the trenches. The shock of it all, comes after, when  there is nothing but memories of the  Cyclops. First the man with the scar and then Jack  came out of the barn. Jack  had his  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.”   He said,  as we made our way back to the men and horses stomping up the dirt track
   “What’s that all about?”  I recall asking and his reply was quirky. 
 “Stashing up for a rainy day.” Was all he said, but his smile made me cuckle, I must say. 

                 Our sergeant was a crook and a bastard.  He  was a   short  wiry Scotsman  called  Brannagh .  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  that had a grey steel stare of contempt about them.  It was clear  that  he   hated everyone  below  him, less there was cut in it. 
              He caught us as we entered  our tented barracks.
 “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.” Jack said.
            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.
“You lads have a special assignment.” There was a viscous grin on his face.
“Us sir?”  I asked
“Yes, you laddie.”  He whispered.
 So with his viscous stare bearing on our backs, he watched us as we joined our new detail. I never forgot it.
We had walked to  the outskirts of Fromelle. I recall that there was  a line of trees, oaks and birches sliding off towards the sunset. The sun was a huge orange ball that settled in the dusk as we all looked at the scene. in front of us, there was a pile of bodies. Our side, the Germans too.  Men of minor military rank from Australia, from Ireland from Canada, from Great Britian.  The pile was six feet high and ten feet across.
The British  Captain who greeted us didn’t smile or shake our hands. His voice carried the air of the middle classes and the  veneer of the aristocracy that, in recent months I  had come to loathe.
“Your job is to remove these men.  Bury them here. There is to be no trace of them. Do  you understand?”
 He stared at  us.  His skin riuddy, his eyes smarting.  He hated this, hated to do this, hated everything about this; and most of all hated  ordering  us to do it. I Coukld see his thoughts on his face as clear as day
“what have they done?” Jack asked
“That is classified.”
“But…”
“If you fail or refuse, you will be shot and added to the pile.  Do you Understand?  DO YOU UNDERSTAND ! “  he  bellowed it out. 
I still see that captain's  blazing  nervous eyes. and  in them  sense his fear.  What had happened here? Why was this being done?  We were not told, we would never know and we were told not to speak a word of it  to anyone. If we did, there would be  the firing squad for us.