Corporal
R A Wilson
We moved next morning before dawn. The Jerries had been given the position of the wood, it was said. In artillery formation we went, sections spaced and on alternate sides of the road. Some time we crossed a railway cutting, where two girls chi-iked us, as girls do passing soldiers. And the dive bombers flew over us later and the message came up the line, that the girls had taken cover and a dropping bomb had buried them. We halted by the roadside and refugees hastened by. We moved again, halted, waited and the planes flew overhead, grey with four black corners which made a cross. And the refugees hurried along, the posh cars had all long gone, transport was by ancient horse or foot. Old men, old women, young women and children. All were tired and usually the children had cried themselves out. Then one of the grey planes swooped down, guns chattered and bullets pinged where they hit the road, and the children ran to the fields and into a little clump of trees. With them was a mother with three, the eldest scarcely five, one would guess, and when the plane banked and returned, they ran in different directions, and mother with only two arms, so a soldier caught the odd one, picked it up clasped it tight and in fear the baby messed itself, the muck oozing down the soldier’s own trousers.
Later in the day, “There,” someone said, “are to be our positions.”
We sorted ourselves out once again and the rations were a tin of bully and a packet of biscuits. Then we moved our positions and sorted ourselves out once more. Darkness, lit still by a bright moon, arrived and not far away a great column of flame shot up to help the moon.
‘Petrol dump going up’, informed opinion had it. Then a voice said,
“Hey Corp, do you or anyone want fags and things?”
“Fags and things?”
“Where from?”
“A Church Army van’s come up, it’s not far away.”
“Good gracious, fancy that, bloody well done!”
And one went back to return shortly, with all sorts of unexpected items.
First light found the new Company Commander with us.
“I’m a firm believer in the three ‘S’s for a soldier first thing in the morning, let’s go and see what we can arrange.”
There was a farm in front of us, 200 yards away and halfway up the gently sloping ground. ‘Jacko’, who’d been 9 platoon commander and, for a while, the only officer in ‘A’ Company, was a tall gentlemanly person and he and I went off. About halfway, a shell flew over going high and dropping far behind us, we looked at each other quizzically, and carried on. Then there was the boom of a gun and another shell followed the first, then another bang and another shell. They posed no danger, so we carried on to arrange the three most important things for a soldier, of which, shave and shampoo were the last.
There was a chap milking a cow inside a shed when we arrived and I asked him
politely enough about a place for washing, a tap or a well? His answer seemed quite surly,
“I’ve no idea!” And I was in no mood to be mucked about, which he saw, for
he then answered, “I’m not the farmer.”
“Who are you then?”
It turned out he was a refugee, with his family asleep in the barn and the farmer and his family gone. The milk was for his children and wife he said, and they’d be glad of it, just as the cow was glad to give it, for all round they bawled with the pain of over-tight udders, their teats dripping with milk. It wasn’t long before some of the troops were easing their pain.
How much washing was done, I can’t remember, but what I do recall was that the rations changed and we had a tin of bacon between two. Cold of course. Jeff and I shared and hacked about with a bayonet to get the stuff out. It was full of lard and each layer was separated from the next by grease-proof paper, or was until we hacked it about and mangled the whole lot up together. It couldn’t be described as a good meal and for Jeff and many others, it was the last.
Time is difficult to tell accurately when one is up half the night and sunrise is getting-up time for even the tiredest, but it was probably about 10 a.m. when a patrol went out from behind us, two men only, Soby and Weeks, and for what purpose we weren’t told.
They made their way unconcernedly to the farmhouse and beyond. The crest of the slope was a couple of hundred yards beyond the farm and that would have been a good place to have taken over for an observation post. Whether they went that far we couldn’t see, but presently, equally unconcernedly as they’d gone, they came back.
Perhaps it was an hour later when the same two went again, in the same manner with the same effect.
(During the morning, maybe between
Soby and Weeks
going out the first and second time, a civvy came walking across our front. Everyone was very
tense, there seemed to be something about, an air of expectancy. The flow of refugees had stopped,
the struggling French deserters had ceased hastening by. Perhaps the birds had finished chirping
and were waiting with everything else. Eyes were restless, nerves taut and the back of the scalp
tingled. And the civvy came from left to right, across our front.
“What’s the bawstud want?” asked
Jeff.
“God alone knows. Gone nuts perhaps?”
Something didn’t seem quite right to any of us, so I called him over.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for my cows!”
There were cows about, all restless and mooing but no one would think had strayed far.
“There are plenty of cows everywhere.”
“But not mine.”
Round the bloody bend, I thought, right off his rocker, looking for cows, got to be mad. I let him go
and then having remembered about the fifth column, thought he should be shot and decided that would
be best and thought again about the uproar and anyway he could be just mad. So he went.)
It was the third or fourth time that they went out, that the patrol were fired on as they reached the gap in the bank of the roadside by the farm and so were we.
‘Ginger’ Pope had trained us to take cover and be in aim in virtually one move. But what to aim at? Bullets whipped past with a ‘spit’ or perhaps a ‘psst’ and a flurry of mortar bombs dropped. Then there were the turrets of three tanks, just above the bank of the road on our front, no bloody good firing a rifle at them. But the bren chattered busily. Rowden and Wilson, who were 1 & 2 on the machine gun must have had a good cover, for with us every move brought a burst. Though it may not have been at us, perhaps it just seemed so!
To our right was a fold in the ground and, sometime during the afternoon a truck, one of ours, could be seen making its way from the rear towards the sunken road in front. Soon it stopped and there was no movement from it.
What it did show was that there were Germans on the other side of that shallow valley. That’s where the mortars came from and some of the machine gun bursts.
Also during the afternoon, a French fighter, a “Morane” I seem to remember they were called, flew along the line of the road and I thought, “Marvellous. Soon we’ll get help!” But we didn’t. Then, right on top of the slope in front, a field gun appeared.
Meantime, men just died, there was nothing else they could do.
It must have been late afternoon or early evening and I had wondered for some time at the lack of enterprise of tanks, who wouldn’t tackle lightly armed infantry, when Jeff was hit. He was a few yards to my right, in his own little bit of cover when I heard a great torrent of bad language. Jeff had been hit in the arm and filled the air with profanities and threats against the German Army, mixed with vows to commit indecent assault upon the person of Adolf Hitler!
When I heard his cursing, I wriggled, low as an eel, over to him.
“Where’ve you copped it?”
He showed his left arm, “Just above the elbow.”
I bade him be quiet till I got my knife out to cut away his uniform.
We had a gas mask over our chests and webbing braces from our belt at the back to the front and on those braces were pouches with bren gun magazines, two to each pouch and there were two cloth bandoliers round our necks with fifty rounds in each and on a lanyard in a pocket underneath it all, was a knife.
Flat on my stomach, I struggled to get it out to cut away Jeff’s sleeve. For cover I had the worn track along which cows had trodden their homeward way, itself in a slight dent in the ground. As I pulled and swore, Jeff said, “Look out! Here come the bleeding tanks!” and, “Look out! here the bawstuds come!” then, “Sod it! I’m off!”
“Stop here!” I said. But he took no notice for a moment, then stopped, stood upright, rested his rifle on a gatepost, aimed and died. Nearby, his mate ‘Yorky’ Langley was also dead and Linfield was dying with a bullet wound which had taken a bit of his cheek and his right eye away. A shell had landed on Pluckrose, Taffy and Jonah. Bridle had died in the bombing, and the bren fired a last burst and in the return fire, Wilson died. McCarthy had gone sick before we’d left billets, so I was left with two.
The tanks came on, there was nothing to stop them. They ran towards and over any they saw, wheeled, formed a line and halted behind us.
And as the tanks rushed at us and over us, I thought, “What now?” and lay as dead with the dead. Maybe if night came soon enough, I could creep away.
Battle sounds ceased.
I lay where I was, my mind clear enough to remember that it would soon be dark and I had better look dead. When it was dark, please God, I could slip away, though which was the way I wasn’t sure. But soon, please God soon, let it be dark, then I could think and move.
My ears were cocked, every sense alert, breathing minuscule.
I heard sounds, what sounds I couldn’t determine. My mind suddenly asked, “What happens to the dead? When do they move them?”
There was almost silence, but there was something about. I heard a distant voice, then nothing. Though I didn’t move, I could sense the dipping sun. Then there were sounds all around indefinite, indecipherable. Almost silence followed once more, then a voice, nearer than before, the rustle of trodden grass. I sensed the nearness of a human. My breathing stopped utterly. Hands touched me. Gentle hands that caressed. I was turned on to my back. I opened my eyes to see a smallish Jerry dressed in tank overalls. He looked perplexed. I ventured a smile, the smile of a man caught cheating at cards. Immediately, several things happened. He produced a gun, I stood up, he prodded me in the belly with the point of the barrel and bellowed. I stuck my thumbs in the corner of my trouser pockets and he bellowed more, prodding harder meantime. His compassion had changed to anger and like too many, he obviously believed that if someone didn’t understand, they would if the message was shouted loud and often enough.
Remotely almost, I thought, “That thing’s going to go off in a moment and I’ll be dead, so this is how it ends.” I wasn’t frightened, almost relieved that the end was so apparent.
From thirty yards away, a cultured voice called out, “Are you in trouble Tommy?”
“Yes, I think I am.”
He was the senior of those present and, after telling the prodder to desist, told me I was to go with him.
“You will be my personal prisoner.”
For the next quarter of a mile or so, I was his personal sand bag, for we crawled away from the tanks towards a crest, beyond which lay dead ground. We peered over, saw no one about, so stood up. I was relieved to have his pistol away from my backside but wasn’t fancying a bullet from our lot either, so made to get him between me and anyone from our side who might still be around. He stopped me, quite dryly saying, “You’d better stay where you are. If your people want to fire they’ll hit you first!”
I thanked him, but no bullet flew.
We walked back again, like friends out for an evening stroll. Away from the crest, back through the line of tanks, past the dead. I saw Jeff, eyes slightly bulged, jaw muscles bunched, giving him a look of surprised, intense pain. There were others, huddled khaki greatcoats, not much difference from the straw stuffed dummies we'd used at bayonet practice, though Alf had lost his right eye and a bit of cheek with it.
Soon we’d reached the farmhouse where more dead lay and some badly wounded too. Amongst them, Skeff the Mick, who’d sworn loyalty, when very drunk, to the Company Commander and anyone else who happened to be around. But Skeff was alive and soon pulled himself around on his elbows as his legs didn’t seem to work. Weeks was there too and Soby. Mates in life as well as on patrol. Weeks still had a flicker of life but so many wounds that he had lost his soldier’s shape. No longer was he a man, rather a November guy made by unskilled hands to be set in an ancient pram, whilst his maker begged pennies. But the mask was Weeks and sometimes the lids just flickered.
“Skeff,” I asked, “can you manage to give me a hand with this poor devil?”
Weeks was a big chap but his wounds were so many that there was nowhere to touch him. Before we’d improved his position in any way, my captor ordered me away.
I got into the sidecar of his combination as ordered and we whisked off into the darkening evening. We rode along the road where the tanks had fired at us and arrived at the flank from where they’d been enfilading us and the gathering dusk shut out the distant wood and closed in on the valley nearby.
There, the Germans and I observed each other with interest. I saw a range-finder,
which seemed better than anything we possessed. They studied my equipment. My captor sat down
next to me, leaning against the bank, then reached out and felt between finger and thumb the
quality of my battledress, derided my tin hat and complained that my bayonet was a couple of
inches longer than theirs. He remarked that the difference between wool and wood for making
cloth for uniforms wasn’t much and then asked, “What do you drink when you’re
in action Tommy?”
“When we’re pushed, as today, water.” (When it comes to slaughter, you do
your job on water).
He took out a bottle of wine and offered it.
“I’d like you to have a drink with me. You did well.”
“If we’d done well, I’d not be here now.”
He looked hard at me for a moment then replied, “Where you are today, I can well be tomorrow!” The bottle was proffered again and the request made, “Come, have a drink.” I was honoured. Gratefully, I took the bottle and a swig. Immediately, the others surrounded me. They too brought out their loot and offered it.
“They all want you to have a drink with them!” my captor said.
I drank in amity, feeling that if I got sloshed, I’d wake up to find that I’d merely had a bad dream.
My captor, or maybe my host, asked, “Have you any English cigarettes?”
“Yes.”
“May I have one?”
“Who else?”
“I’ll give you one of mine in exchange. I haven’t smoked an English cigarette
since I was at Oxford.”
We all swapped fags.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Oh, a car is coming up for you. You’ll go back for interrogation.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.” I hesitated, uncertain how to phrase the question,
“What happens... what happens to people like me?”
“Oh, I think they’ll send you to Poland.”
Then kindly and earnestly, “Can I give you some advice?”
“Who better?”
“Whilst you’re with us, in the line, you’ll be alright. You and I know what
soldiering is about. Soon though, you’ll be away from it. Then you’ll come across
the party wallahs and the column-dodgers. They’ll think it big to push a chap like you
around. Take my advice, when you get away from the line, watch your step!”
I remembered his words those days later, when men who’d not heard a shot fired in anger, were jeering at those who had. And I remembered them again, when many of those same oafs would have been taken prisoner too, if they weren’t pushing up the daisies in Russia or Italy or France!
And I sought my captor after the war.
I was told much later on that, on the after-action roll-call, men nearly wept for ‘A’ Company, the gaps were almost total. Some number like seven, out of about one hundred and twenty, were all that stood on parade.
And for those of you who are interested in such things, never once was there a hint of surrender and no sign of a white flag appeared. ‘A’ Company may have been overwhelmed but were in no moral manner defeated!