Summer Blossom

I could feel myself shaking whilst my own arms hugged my body. I had attempted to warm myself with the blanket wrapped around me and pulled together at my chest, but the snow was sticking to my head and coating my uniform as it fell in waves. The calmness of the snow was unusually distinct, and the forest was silent. Changing position, I could feel the two men either side of me, also becoming coated in snow; we were blending with the scenery as if we could never leave. I stood slowly, feeling the frozen dirt below me scratch my once polished boots, and lifted the blanket over the hole. I lay it down to stop the snow from landing on us and slid back on to my backside. The ground was hard and felt like sharp, tensed knuckles on my thighs as I sat. I leant sideways to move and felt the Lugar that Grewar, the soldier huddled beside me, had stolen from a dead German. Feeling stress and anxiety take over me although I had no energy to express it, I rolled on my hip a little and turned until the ground was only pressing against me in resistance a little. I had tried to sleep earlier that afternoon, when everything was quiet in the area, and succeeded only to a slim extent.
Movement outside stirred me and I opened my eyes to the liquid darkness, to see a river of light peek through and a body slip in to our hole. Darkness engulfed us once again and I listened for a familiar voice. Breathing found me from where the man had placed himself, and his legs slid out towards me and rested at my ankles, pressing his boots on to mine. He jolted then and the leather on our boots squealed when they rubbed.
‘Larose? Are you awake?’ Sergeant Jackson’s voice was coarse and I could hear the pain in his speech. His throat had been aching for days now, and Grewar’s medical skills had not found a reason, other than too much talking, or a cure for the problem other than a halt to the talking. He tugged at the cover blanket over us. ‘Have you got a lighter?’ I unlocked the tight fold of my arms and reached one across to the opposite inside pocket of my jacket. Throwing the lighter would have been my immediate and natural action, but the darkness denied me this, and so I handed it to Jackson through means of tapping the metal body on his knee as I bent forwards.
‘Thank you. I lost mine this morning.’ He flicked the lid off and the lighter sprung to life in the darkness. I heard Grewar moan his distaste and then turn, so that his face was illuminated close to mine. He looked through the darkness with wide, bloodshot eyes and continued to stare at nothing until he focused on Jackson. He was shaking still and I steadied the left arm that was pressing against me with my own right arm. Sergeant Jackson lit his straight, protruding cigarette in his lips and let the lighter sleep calmly again. Our makeshift hole went dark apart from the glowing sight of the end of the cigarette. It danced around as he moved his head up and down, and took the stick from his mouth. Smoke blew towards me and I would have mentioned how uncomfortable this was, but instead I welcomed the smell that was anything other than earth and our hideously old and dirty uniforms. Light appeared again and I thought someone else was going to try to fit in our small fox hole, but instead I saw the Sergeant’s head bent backwards as he blew smoke into the air above the blanket. Between us the air in the hole was smoky, and he waved his hand generously to move it around, splitting it with outspread fingers.
‘What’s happening out there then, Jackson?’ I muttered. I muttered slowly, and as slowly as my words were thought up and my lips freed them, I heard the gentle sound of a bullet splitting the air outside. The first shot in at least twenty-four hours was soothing and usual, and it reached our hole quietly, with an echo to its body. Then the following stutters surrounded the area outside, mixing with the silence. It was a strange thought to follow up from Jackson’s hand and the smoke, but I pictured myself as the bullet splitting the cold air in the forest.
‘That’s one of them.’ The Sergeant stubbed his cigarette on the dirt wall beside him and we were flooded in darkness again. He pulled himself up and protruded his head from beneath the blanket. I saw him watching the area closely, and then the thumping of boots echoed through the walls of mud and to my ears. I think Jackson told me something then, but I was too pre-occupied with finding my gun amongst the darkness and the frozen mud, and my companions’ boots. I found the edge of the metal and pulled it to my shoulder, and then slapped my metal helmet to my skull.
Grewar came to life beside me, as did Denham on my other side. It was as if the sound was an alarm to us, we knew where we should be and what we had to do at its command. It controlled us and our bodies had become accustomed to its ring; it had charm, I could not deny. There was something in its echoing, splitting, action that called to us. Attention of each of our minds was focused on the bullet and its releaser. Grewar reached up and pulled the blanket in on us, and the roof of our hole caved in on our heads. I blew away the snow that entered my mouth and was flung on to my face by the collapsed roof, and Jackson pulled it to the side and stuffed it to the icy floor. Thumping was emerging from the cluster of trees behind us, a cluster that looked identical to the entire forest, but one that was close to us and seemed recognisable. I turned back and looked for the foxhole back and to our left, now on my right, to see the machine gun being propped up on its edge calmly, as if they did not know where to aim it to. Helmet’s were emerging around us and a shout travelled from far back where the Captain was and greeted us; it was muffled and unrecognisable due to the distance from us, and so I ignored it, accompanied by Jackson, Grewar and Denham. Grewar stayed down and waited. He was waiting for the medic call, and we all knew he dreaded that call. Denham murmured something about getting the attention of the others in the fox hole further down to our left and then he stood. Before we could shout anything to him, before the sound had even reached us, his uniform jacket had been punctured. I looked at the jacket as if it were armour; the puncture was in the uniform not him. The German’s hated the uniform, not the man. But this did not seem such a good analysis when the blood seeped through gently. It was so gentle it seemed immaculately practiced. His body knew exactly how to bleed and where from; like fate.
As I had been watching the tiny hole in the tweed jacket, Grewar had missed his medic call. He dreaded this just as much as the call, as he had no call. It was his own state of mind that had to decide that the call had been made with the bullet. Bullets had so many calls that we all knew how to answer well; it was inspiring. Grewar tore open the thick jacket in one tender motion as Denham’s body fell backwards to the ground. I dragged him by the collar back in to our hole where I threw him down with all of my strength; Grewar pulling at his jacket the entire time with his head bent low to avoid bullets. Ripping open the jacket, forcing buttons to flick up and vanish into the hole somewhere to blend with the dirt, Denham’s stomach and chest were simultaneously exposed to us. I stared at the tiny hole in his stomach, which was beginning to gush the red fluid in pints. Grewar was shouting something to me and I pricked up my ears to his voice.
‘Pressure, Larose! Give it pressure, right here.’ Grewar took my right hand, which was free whilst my other hand gripped my gun in fear, and forced it down to Denham’s stomach. I felt his hot skin on my palm and the moist wound under the centre of my hand. I kept pressing and then I dropped my gun; the fluid would not stop, there was immense pressure flowing through under my palm and forcing the blood out of his body. I pressed harder, and with my left hand attempted to wipe the blood that was flooding his chest. It was as if a puddle was forming on his stomach, and the blood looked oil like as I spread it away and across his entire torso. I kept spreading frantically whilst pushing down on his stomach, feeling his heart beat through the wound. I kept my hand on the pressure and tried to steady my freezing hands against his skin. I had not felt warmth like this from another body for months now, and the skin’s heat felt unnatural. I had experienced the heat off my own body, but it never felt quite the same as another’s warmth. This was a revolting way to feel the heat of someone’s skin, and I could feel the blood swelling under my palm as if it were to explode at any moment and flood his entire torso.
‘I need to get the bullet out! I need to find the artery that’s been cut. Hold him fucking still!’ Grewar rolled him over and prised open the jacket further so that he could look for an exit wound. There was no exit wound and as he rolled Denham over I saw blood trickle around and down his spine. Rolling him back, he tossed him back to the floor on his back and moved my hands which were still pressing down. The wound was so tiny it seemed as if it could not cause this much agony, which was displayed through Denham’s screams and facial pleading. I watched as Grewar touched the flesh around the wound, which was puckered and loose. He smeared blood away and stretched his finger and thumb in to Denham’s stomach. I thought I felt my stomach flip and roll, but I watched all the same, waiting for the bullet to emerge in Grewar’s grip or waiting to see him grip some lifeline that pulsed in Denham’s entity like a beacon. I watched until it did and as it did I saw steam rise from Denham’s body. He had stopped shouting and I looked up to his face, pulled back to it by his sudden silence, and saw him looking at me. He reached up and his fingers stretched out and pulsated at my forearm. Grewar was still wiping away the dispersing blood as it pooled on the porcelain white skin of Denham’s stomach. I could see his well-defined abdominal muscles flexing and tensing as he twisted from the anguish and pain. I stopped staring at his wound and looked to my hands, which sat limply on my bent knees. I had left dark red stains in the shape of my outspread fingers on my trousers. I wiped the blood off and looked up at Grewar as Denham let out a spluttering sound which sent dark liquid dripping out from between his clenched teeth.
‘Don’t you dare, David.’ Grewar spat at him, moving his soaked hands back to the wound after dropping the stained bullet somewhere, and pressed. He stuck a bandage to the wound and continued to press, the side that was not touching Denham’s body soaking up the bloody finger marks Grewar left. A gurgling sound erupted from Denham’s mouth and he choked, spluttering blood on my cheek and his own face. It speckled his face which was already smeared with dusty brown dirt that had dried over the days, becoming his normal appearance. I saw Grewar stop pressing and let his hand slide over the oily red surface of Denham’s pasty white stomach; right hand’s fingers still emerged in his friend’s body. I slumped over on the sides of my legs and watched as Grewar pressed his face to the top of Denham’s chest, his nose buried in the white skin. Denham had died and his best friend had forced his fingers in to his body to retrieve the enemy bullet; an attempt to salvage his life, or perhaps just a few more moments of it.
Grewar fell over backwards and I heard his head hit the wall behind him with a crack, the mud crumbling over his shoulders. He fumbled on the ground with his hands and found the bullet. He wiped it off and placed it in his pocket. I saw his mouth form indistinguishable words, a gibberish language that cursed the war and the Germans in his own mind, and somehow I understood. The area had grown silent, and whilst we had been trying to find the bullet and a cure for oncoming death, Sergeant Jackson had appeared and stood above us watching in blank solitude, then he turned and left. It was silent around us again. We sat alone together with Denham’s body, which was still seeping blood from his stomach. I moved the bandage back and placed it on the wound, and it immediately began to soak up the blood, sucking it in to its fibres and relishing it. I found our ceiling blanket and placed it over Denham’s body, just after I had watched a rivulet of crimson trickle down the side of his mouth and his neck. Silence had been re-found in the forest, and I looked up to see two other men, Private Evans and Sergeant Rumble, looking down at us. They told us that the firing had been a one off, and the German had stumbled in to our section of the woods by accident. The rumbling had been from far off at the other end of the woods where the other company were. The German had been shot after firing only two rounds.
After twenty minutes of sitting next to Denham’s body, Grewar suddenly burst from our hole and fell on to the white ground. As he pushed himself up and ran, he left bloody handprints in the white snow. I watched him run towards where Evans had motioned to when they spoke of the disorientated German. I sprung from our hole and followed immediately, worried of Grewar’s actions that might follow. As he reached the German, who lay sprawled on the ground, two perfectly formed bullet holes in his forehead and temple, he stopped. I reached him at a relaxed pace and stopped a few steps behind him. He was just staring at the German soldier. Wondering what he was about to do, I saw him reach in to his pocket and pull out the bullet that had nestled in to Denham’s skin. He stepped forward and grunted something, then stooped down to the German with his head tilted to the side. He reached forward with a relaxed grip on the bullet between his fingers, and grit hit teeth as he pressed the sharp metal into the German’s forehead. He twisted the bullet from side to side, pressing deeply on to the skin that was already blood stained from being shot, until more blood emerged from the hole in his forehead and the cut that Grewar was creating next to it.
'Cold-blooded Bastard. His blood is fucking cold, Larose. Fucking cold!' He continued to press, malice filling his swelling eyes. I had nothing to say to him in return, and so I continued to watch him bleed a dead German soldier dry until he stood and kicked the German’s head with great force that produced a crack of his neck as it rolled sideways and blood leaked on to the snow. Nothing we did would have stopped him from partaking in this action; though none of us felt any need to prevent it. Why should we? He deserved it for all we cared.

The days in the winter forest were long and cold. No amount of hot water that had been renamed tea, a pathetic excuse though one which we accepted gratefully, could warm us. It tasted like toilet water, toilet water that had been dunked with one teabag then distributed into 20 different metal flasks. Out flasks warmed our gloved hands for a short while when we sat in the hole, though at one point one had warmed the side of my face when it was thrown unknowingly when a sudden attack fell on us; yet another reason for the kicking of the dead German to go unnoticed and unstopped. Grewar had grown distant since Denham’s death, and I had noticed the dark red stain on his jacket that still remained. Denham’s parting gift to Grewar was to ruin his jacket and remain stained and dried on his torso. Our foxhole had been drowned in snow at some point, and after attempts to dig it out again for us to enter it once again; we had failed and moved to another. A larger hole which occupied three men already welcomed us, perhaps for the company, though most probably for the body heat and the comfort of safety in numbers: numbers of men and numbers of weapons. Either thought almost doubled the chance of survival and feeling of hope that kept us all rubbing our uniforms to heat up our bodies.
In the canopy above us a few of the tallest trees had been burnt to half way down their trunks. The blackened bark that looked charred and hot beckoned a resistance from the snow. Snow lay softly on the tops of the still green trees and tried to stick to the few spindly branches of the burnt trees but failed. The black sticks in the snow were burnishing the pure colour and looked strange. I had nothing to think of but these small details that surrounded us during most of the time in the forest and I occupied myself with cleaning my boots with the bottom of my trousers, spotting odd occurrences in the forest such as a stray boot lying amongst some undergrowth and challenging the snowflakes with my tongue. I had heard that in hot weather one should drink hot drinks, such as tea and coffee, though much to my amusement this did not clarify when in cold weather, for the snowflakes numbed my tongue and mouth further.
Until out next encounter with the enemy, which was on a much larger scale, I had found time to think a little of Madeline and the bar I had introduced her to. I had known at the time that it may not be a wise move to take her there but I had also presumed that she would adore the place. We had danced that evening, late in to the evening in fact, and she had known I was leaving. There was nothing that I had wanted more than to be able to think back on spending my last night, as a man free from the army, with her. Denham had shown me a poster of a girl that he kept in his inside pocket days before his death, and the image had stayed in my mind. The painting of the topless woman had made me think of Madeline, as her face seemed far too young for her body. Her rosy cheeks and perfectly sculpted facial details had seemed childlike and innocent, and I presumed this was a mistake by the artist. Her eyes were wide and large, and framed with lashes that curled upwards on to her eyelids and down below her eyes. Madeline’s face had sprung to mind and I could not remove the image of her face on the woman’s body from my mind. It was an unusual way to think of her and of the woman in the drawing, as the woman was a fictional character produced for the entertainment and sanity of the soldiers here, and Madeline was never to be compared to something as downgrading as this.
Enemy weapons had rumbled closer this time, and I had hoped that it was the same situation as the last, far down the line where the other company were hidden amongst the white woods. Another tree took a blast near us and I saw the fire crawl down its body in a sleek motion, eating away at the vegetation and life within its bark and trunk. I imagined the tree as standing tall with no weapon, with pride and conviction, and the enemy weapon just stripping it bare of its uniform and leaving it nothing but an empty shell of nature. This disturbed me and I happened to see Grewar’s face at this moment. He had heard his call again and he had curled himself up in to a ball. I pulled him at the collar and dragged him from the hole towards where the injured man lay. Grewar had come to his senses and the man was screaming in pain before he settled a little and began to ask if he was okay. Grewar had told him he was okay but he would have to hang on until the vehicles returned and he could be taken to the medic centre in the nearest settlement. The man had writhed and clawed at the injured leg that Grewar had secured with a cream white bandage. His hands were once again bloody and he wiped them across Denham’s stain, creating a mixture of men’s blood; something that should never occur but now had on our medic’s uniform. There was something that connected him and all of the men that he tended to, and it resided on his hands and uniform. We all had the chance of being there someday, and this thought terrified me. I returned to our hole, crouching as I went so as to avoid the squealing bullets that chattered at the floor around me, and jumped up from the snow into the trees. The fire in the tree had burnt out and left branches scattered on the floor in a mosaic-like structure. I watched Grewar run back to our hole and dive in beside the two other soldiers and I, and he hid. He his because he had no weapon; ‘no weapon, no danger’ was his motto. Though I knew the danger that he faced, and it was the reason that he was wiping his hands on his trousers, and pretending he was deaf to the calls around him of injuries.

My eyesight was a little off when I woke this morning and I wanted to rub my eyes clean of the sleep. I would have done so if it weren’t for the ice that had formed on my gloves. I must have left my hands by my sides rather than curled around me like I was used to sleeping. I sat up in the mud hole that had become home for the past few weeks and looked up at the mist that was hugging the tops of the trees in our surroundings. The fog hung low, certainly down to the ground, making it impossible to see anything that was further than 20 feet away from us. It sat around the trunks of the thin trees softly like frozen breath from our mouths. Shaking the ice from my hands I removed them and stared at my fingers. The palms of my hands were still a little less rough than the fingertips, but my fingertips had grown hard and rough like sandpaper. I thought back to the evening I had first met Madeline, and I had held her hand in mine whilst I had kissed it. Her hand had been so soft then, and I could never imagine touching them again with my jagged skin. I rubbed my eyes dry and blinked at the fog again, it was still thick and creamy looking, and nothing was possible to decipher from our surrounding other than mounds of snow that had been moved to dig foxholes. I was so cold that morning I could feel myself shaking as if I had a nervous twitch. I had watched a few of the men shaking similarly for the past few weeks, and realised that the cold coupled with the nerves that swept through their bodies would cause horrendous, uncontrollable fluctuations on shakes. There was a clanking noise from behind me and I turned slowly in the frozen mud of our hole to see a little movement through the fog. The silhouettes were only faint at first, but when the vehicle came in to view I understood the movement of the basic components in the makeshift kitchen. Voices were muffled in the cold and the fog and straining to hear only frustrated me, so I decided to exit my hole and find the contributors to the noise.
I lifted myself on painful, aching feet encased in hard boots and stepped from the deep hole I had been attempting to attain sleep in. My gun slung around my shoulder on my side tapped against my ribcage and torso, and I felt its dense metal on my uniform. Listening to the voices that were becoming clearer, I picked up a few sentences about the mess and the lack of food. I could hear Evans speaking to someone, he being the one complaining of the lack of food in the area. At the mention of food I felt my stomach vibrate inside of me and hunger for something to fill it. I ignored the sound and imagined having just eaten the most grand looking and superb tasting English breakfast I could manage to picture in my mind, and then I reached the men who were standing around together next to the vehicle. The vehicle was disgustingly dirty with mud splashed up the entire front section of its bonnet, and the sides caked in a dark mixture of animal faeces and wet dirt. Even the lights were now camouflaged into the greenish brown metal surface. The Corporal was stood looking down at the makeshift kitchen that the men had been enjoying brewing yet another tasteless saucer of tea in together. I steadied myself on the lumpy snow of the area and saluted Corporal Louis, who returned the gesture and then slumped down on the side of the car. He had recently been back to the nearest settlement, where many of the men had been taken if injured, and I awaited his news of the area and from above us. He told us that the last attack was known of, and they had anticipated something similar to its degree for a few weeks now, unknown to us of course. I always did think it was nice of them to keep us up to date with the arrangements and expected situations, terribly thoughtful. We were to be going in to another town, around 50 miles north east of the area we currently inhabited on a mission that meant we had to secure the town for another company. We were being sent in to make it a safe zone for someone else, and then we were to return here. I could not understand why they could not secure their own area, but I dared not to ask, as the mission would go ahead whether I disagreed or not.

A few hours before the sun was due to rise we had gotten organised in our holes before heading to the vehicles in the settlement where the aid station was situated. We had all changed her to better transport vehicles and begun the 50 mile journey north east of us. It was still snowing, though only very faintly, and every now and then a rampant breeze would indulge itself in the warmth of our vehicle where we all huddled in the back together and we would all silently curse it. Bumpy roads were all that led to the small town that we headed for and our vehicles tyres took well to the rough terrain with their thick rubber. I had experienced the punctures and ruined tyres a few times now whilst inside the vehicles and I had also managed to change two tyres on different vehicles in the freezing temperatures. I hoped to god that our tyres would last until we had evacuated the back of the vehicle and would not be forced to jack the vehicle up and change the stupid tyres.
Once we had arrived at the town we had excited the vehicle from the open space in the back, having unlocked the partial door and heard its thick metal smash against the bottom of the bumper. Lights had been smashed already on a few of the vehicles, including the one I rode in, and the glass was chipped and shattered. Another smashed as the metal door swung loosely below the car, and the red glass lay on the snow in shards. I ignored this and begun to organise the men around me, who were staring at each other in dismay. I had to give it to them; this was tiring, and the fact that we were here for another company’s benefit did not in any manner improve the feeling of boredom and disappointment. Our boots crunched through the fresh snow towards the desolate town and I surveyed the shattered, disembowelled buildings that lay ahead. The first we passed had been hollowed out with fire and the wall of the front door was spattered with holes from a machine gun. With the exception of the hollow blasts that we could hear faintly from the distance, the entire landscape was as silent as a graveyard. I pictured the buildings as gravestones, marking the places that people once lay in their beds, now somewhere cremated in the inner workings of their town. There was a sharp gash that ran directly over the muddy road before me as I walked towards the town still, and I indentified it as the tracks from a large machine gun being manoeuvred from the side of the road. Furniture from somewhere in the town lay on the edges of the road; a wooden rocking chair still intact with a dark tartan blanket that lay across one of its arms; a dressing table including the three feminine mirrors that a foreign woman had once applied make-up perfectly in just weeks before now; a delicate, petite cradle that bore marks of a loving craftsman, with gently shaped swirls and patterns running along one cracked side. There was nothing to connect these objects to now and the town seemed as if it had always been this way, or at least that was how I wanted to imagine it.
One of the men behind me coughed and I realised that we were all walking at a gentle pace together, onwards, towards the main body of the village. Now there were houses on both of our sides, and every single one was decimated by some form of weapon. Machine gun wounds that had struck the walls of the buildings left perfectly round scars in the plaster, the roofs had collapsed on many of the houses and the tiles lay scattered for dozens of feet surrounding each house. Furniture continued to decorate the edges of the street, and a collapsed lamppost lay blocking the road. As I had anticipated, the centre of the town was more or less completely destroyed, and the only way I could identify that it was the main centre was the stone fountain in the middle of the muddy square. The tiles around the fountain were cracked and ruined and their colour was covered by the snow and ice that was forming still, one layer on top of another. A dense smell was rising from the area and I searched around for its source. Something was letting of the stench of rotting flesh, and I dreaded the sight that it would bring to my eyes. I did not want to see anyone dead, not even a German soldier, as I could only bear the sight of the dead enemy if I had experienced their malice towards my company and me. I discovered Evans choking on the stench to the left of a magnificently sturdy building which was still partly intact, displaying its deep red bricks and the detail in the stone above the high front door. He was covering his mouth and I could see his eyes stinging and watering from the smell of the rotting horse that was before him. Underneath the horse lay another rotting horse, and the only life I had seen other than members of the British army buzzed around the decomposing flesh and pulsed in the red carcass of the horses. I gawped at the sight and then sucked my breath in through the tight fingers that I had covered my mouth and nose with, and then gagged at the smell and taste of my own unwashed gloves. I turned away and ignored the dead horses that Evans had also moved away from speedily, and I returned to the stone fountain. The entire town was empty, there was no need to even attempt to secure it as there was no chance that anyone would want to claim it. IT was a wreck of fallen down horses and rotten horse bodies. The stone fountain bore the embellishment of the artist and architecture which was an intricate carving of two swans with grand, open wings, facing in opposite directions with their heads held high in pride.
Something moved in a building behind Evans and I, and I ignored it until Evans’ hand hit my chest to get my attention. I turned my head and looked across my soldier at the building that the sound had emerged from, and expected to see one of the soldiers doing something strange or stupid. I waited for them to emerge with some sort of prize from the building that they would claim would be good to return home with but then leave it so they would not have to carry it around from now on. Something rolled down the stairs and I looked around to see if any of the other men had noticed; they had all left for the other end of the square, and were now congregating around a tattered, demolished bakery where someone had discovered a hoard of food worth eating. I lifted my gun slowly in my hand and merged into the soldier I had longed to hide inside of me for just a few more hours so that I could relax in the empty town and maybe track down a drink. We stepped towards the house, which not had no need for a front door, as the front wall was non existent now. The staircase was exposed, missing a few stairs which had fallen through, and I stared at them with my gun pricked up to the expected movements. Some dust puffed away from the top of the staircase, and a creak met my ears very quietly, so quiet I did not think that Evans had heard it. A child. A tiny little girl dressed in nothing but the ripped, torn, filthy remains of a small dress. Her upper body was exposed to the cold air and her hair was matted, splayed around her tender face. Another child stepped up behind her. An older girl of around fourteen years old, she towered above the infant and stared at us. I let my gun drop to the side and felt a disgusting pain shoot through my whole body. The older girl pressed her hands to the tiny child’s shoulders and then preceded to lift her up and turn her around, pressing her semi-naked body against her own barely clothed body. Evans swore beside me and I heard his gun hit the floor, a sharp metal clunk that only just met my ears. I continued to stare at the two girls, the smallest now having begun to cry softly against the chest of the older girl. She stared at me with dark eyes, a brown as sallow and disheartened as the mud on my boots; cloudy like the snow that covered the mud but turned to transparent ice.
I stepped towards them slowly, motioning with my right hand for Evans to follow me. I wanted to rid myself of the feeling of complete emptiness at this sight. I longed for a mother, any mother, to be here at this moment. Their eyes beckoned for us to come closer to them and help, but the older girls fear was so obvious that I wanted to just leave her to her own devices. I felt so daunting, as if I was a danger to the girls. Any courage that I had felt in the past few months in the war had disintegrated. Who was I to challenge other men at war? I knew now. They had left these children alone, perhaps intentionally, and it made me sick with anger that this could ever happen. The older girl stepped towards the edge of the stairs at the highest point, and I heard a crack resonate through the wood and then silence itself. I lifted my hand to tell her to stay where she was, but she just looked at me whilst moving down on to the next step, and then the next. She stopped then, and let her left hand drop to her side and lift behind her, as if she were waiting for someone to take it. I hoped to god there was an adult with her, a parent, and I wanted nothing more than to not see another child emerge from the darkness of the upper rooms of the house. I felt complete and utter sadness when a small hand lifted to hers and a boy stepped in to view. He was naked and shivering, his porcelain white skin spattered in mud and smudged across his face.
I sighed to myself. I then stepped forwards at a sudden approach, now knowing that the girl was making her way towards us with the two infants, and I needed to get them from this disgusting place. As I reached the bottom step, she reached the third from the bottom and I was close enough to take the small girl in my outstretched hands. Her body was limp and she felt incredibly small and delicate in my hands. She did not cry as I took her. She let out a breath as I brought her closer to my body so I could not lose my grip on her tiny body, and she stared at me. Her eyes were a pale blue, as empty and azure as a winter sky in a cold foreign country, and they blinked at me slowly. She must have been around a year and a half old, and I couldn’t imagine ever letting her go again. I wanted to make sure that this small child lived on for as long as humanly possible, and had everything in her life that would let her never know about this. I wanted her to have children of her own who would live somewhere where war was a thing of the past, where men had fought to keep the sanity of the world. I wanted this to be a daughter of my own who I could give this all to. I held her close to me, my hand on her head, my other on her bare back. She was so cold. I removed my glove from the hand that was on the back of her head with my teeth, and then removed the other with my now bare hand. She felt a little warmer now that my skin touched hers, and I pressed her close enough to me that she would maybe warm up a little. She moved her head around and pressed her face to my chest so that she was hidden from the sharp, stinging cold outside of the building. I moved her around and undid the buttons on my jacket. Once it was undone I moved her inside my jacket and pulled the sides around her body, feeling her begin to sob like she had into the other girl’s chest. I looked behind and saw the older girl holding the small boy now. Evans had run back to the other men and gathered a few blankets, and was now covering the girl and the small boy. We were completely silent and the silence hurt, through we all knew nothing but it at the moment.
The other men had stopped their commotion at the bakery and were now staring at us in utter confusion. I made my way towards the fountain with the girl inside of my jacket, and as I reached it three men turned to watch me. As I approached they stood to attention, their backs straight, and their expressions clouded with the presence of young children. Evans sat the older girl down on the edge of the fountain, on a blanket he had kept for her comfort on the ice covered stone. He seated her and wrapped yet another blanket around her and the boy. I held tightly on to the small girl, and she breathed in a slow rhythm against me. She made a noise that reminded me of a small, new animal as she coughed. The older girl looked up at me with tired eyes, and looked to the small girl in my arms, then back to my face. I smiled a half-hearted attempt at a smile at her, and she merely stared at my face still. Evans was stood looking at me, his nerves shaking through the blood in his veins so that his entire body rocked form side to side now. He looked up at me and waited for me to say something on the situation. I covered the ears of the small child, though I knew no amount of hushed speaking in a foreign language would disturb her in the warmth of my jacket now, and told Evans to go to the bakery that the men had congregated around and fetch some food for the children. He nodded and jumped at the opportunity to walk out the adrenaline that had pulsed through him and moved towards the crowd of silenced, frozen men. They let him pass easily, breaking their crowd and moving away for him to enter the shop by stepping over the broken wooden door. I stood completely still in the centre of the filthy square, the girl in my arms still. I wondered whether I should speak to the older girl, whether she would be able to answer my questions; whether I could even think of any questions to ask her. I turned and saw she was still looking at me, her arms stretched around the little boy on her lap who was snuffling and wiping his running nose on the outer blanket of their warm cocoon.
She was old enough to understand someone would soon be asking her questions, and I took on the role in a hushed voice with my French dialect wavering in the silence of the square. I asked her where her parents were and she answered in monosyllables. Her French accent was as soft as a feather to my ears, and I waited for her to look back to my face before I asked another question. As she looked up to me she pressed her hands against the boys head on her chest and covered both of his ears sufficiently; I copied, and she told me that her parents had been shot. I was amazed by the clarity and confidence that entered her voice at that moment, and watched the blank expression disperse itself over her face. She had come to terms with this is seemed, though I knew that she wouldn’t have. There were children to think of; the children that we both held in our arms.
They were her younger siblings, as I had assumed, and she watched me with unusual trust as she spoke to me. I did not know if this was because I had a genuine tender for her own language, or because I held her sister in my arms with a feeling of loss for them all. As we spoke in short sentences the vehicles arrived that were to take us back to the settlement and the aid station. I told the driver that I would be accompanying the children back to the aid station, and he notified Sergeant Jackson, who was on the other side of the town with the rest of our company, including the Captain. I had been left in charge of the few men that had entered from our side of the town, and now I was leaving Evans with the men. I did not care for who would be in charge, I wanted nothing to do with the military at this moment, and I just wanted to make sure the children were okay. Evans came with me in the end and we sat in the back of the large, hollow truck with the three children. I still held the small girl in my arms, and she was asleep in a blanket now, sleeping softly as if she had not in a long time.
‘Her name is Isabelle.’ The older girl said to me in perfect English. I stared at her, the unexpected words did not surprise me, and they felt rehearsed. I watched her look from Evans to me, and then she turned away and placed her head against the dark hair of her younger brother’s head and close her eyes to the cold weather at the back of the truck. I pressed my face to Isabelle’s hair and smelt the damp cold that she had been living in for god knows how long. I tried to speak to Evans but I could feel his nerves still. He was terrified of the situation and I saw he felt empty in the company of the children.

Once we arrived at the aid station I was told to leave the children with the French nurses. I entered the grand house with them and surveyed the aid station. There were wooden beds from around the town that had been moved into this one house. The walls were decorated tastefully in floral paper and similar coloured paint which had a glossy, clean sheen to it. A long, thin chandelier hung from the ceiling of the entrance hall which we first walked through, and I felt guilty for the muddy footprints I was probably leaving. A large staircase sprawled up to my left and into the upper floors of the house, which was coated in a thick blue carpet to match the paint progressing up the walls of the staircase and the blue hints of paint that decorated the banister in a pattern, painted on to the carved leaves in the wood. I continued through the house, following the nurse who had greeted Evans, the children and I, and held Isabelle close to me still. She had woken now and I hushed her to silence in the compound of the grandeur of the house. Men scattered the house scarcely, and I realised that many of them would soon be returning to the cold and wet outside after they had healed, and their tense worried feelings could be felt in the atmosphere. Evans followed the girl who held her brother and ushered her forward past a soldier who had bandages covering his face which were stained dark red. She in turn covered the boys face and turned his head towards some large paintings on the wall above a white fireplace on the other side of her. As we reached a back room, next to a large kitchen whose creamy white cabernets reflected each other and the bright light from the room, the nurse stopped.
I reluctantly lifted Isabelle away from my chest, where she had been warmed for going on three hours now, and gave her to the nurse. The French nurse hushed and cooed the tiny girl, and wrapped her warmly in the blanket I had cocooned her in in the truck. She brought her close to her bosom and rocked her against her body as a mother would to her own baby. I realised I had no place here with the children. I was a soldier, I was the war. She was a woman, she was safety. I let my hands fall to my sides and I glanced at each child in turn. Isabelle had turned her gaze to the nurse and forgotten about the warmth of my jacket and blanket and arms, and was coughing again in the nurse’s embrace. The boy, whose name I understood to be Noel, was sat on a bed with a morose face. He looked empty of life and thought, and any hint of a child had disappeared from him. It was a painful sight and I wanted something childish to emerge in his face, his eyes, his frail naked body, but he just sat staring at the floor with his older sister, Arielle, at his side. She looked to my eyes then and I met them with my waning gaze. She smiled a thankful smile and then looked back to the nurse, who was cooing the baby girl with affection and hope. Evans pulled my arm and spun me around.
‘This is no place for us. Let’s leave them with the nurses. They’ll help, they’re better at the maternal side of things, you know.’ I had been thinking this the entire time, but in words it felt more meaningful. The female nurses with their perfectly styled hair and welcoming womanly faces and figures should be as far away from us soldiers with those children as possible. All I could hope for was some warm food for the children and new clothes. I nodded and turned to say au revoir to the children, but they had already been crowded with nurses and the room felt warm and comfortable; too comfortable for comfort for me. I left the house without a single word being spoken to anyone, and Evans led me back to the vehicle. We were to go back to our original post and wait for the rest of the company to return. I buttoned up my jacket and felt an empty space around my chest area. How easy it was to become attached to something that had perfectly untouched innocence. That was all we needed every now and then, a sign that we were here for a reason, a reminder of existence outside of guns and death.

Days later I was given the news that the children were all safe, all but Noel. Evans told me he had been back to the hospital to check on the children, from a distance he had said so they did not get distracted or reminded of him, and he was not fairing well. I had no idea ho to react to this until Evans suggested I go and see the children myself. I did not want to cause them any problems, but as the eldest would remember me anyway I felt there would be no danger in checking on them, as the two youngest probably would not care anyway. I left my fox hole and the cold ground in which it lay and begun my walk to the settlement. I did not want to travel in the vehicles, as there were so many of them travelling back and forth to our place on the line that I knew we would stop on many occasions to speak with other men in other vehicles. The road was entirely straight towards the settlement, and I could see it on the flat distance from when I begun on the road. The lingering fog had cleared in the last two days and left us with clarity and a welcomed freshness in contrast to the stale winter air. Recycled air had surrounded us in the forest and the town with the aid station for weeks, and the new air from above the fog was a gift. Along the road I walked in slush and dirty water which had been melted and splashed across the tarmac and gravel by the continuous trail of trucks and soldiers. I was the only man walking the road but no one cared. A car passed me and I saw two nurses sat in the back as it drove past me, they were gossiping about something that was making one of them laugh and the other blush, and as I turned my head to watch them one waved her hand familiarly. I did not know her, but I returned the wave with little expression or thought, and turned back on my walk. The slush was freezing to layers of unusually shaped ice on the sides of the road, and I crunched the soles of my boots over some hard patches and kicked the shards away.
I watched the buildings the entire way, not looking in any other direction, just focusing directly on one large building whose chimneys poked up above the rest. As I entered the surrounding buildings I walked in an almost straight line towards the grand house that I had left the three children in. The door was closed and I knocked and got no answer. I let myself in by twisting the cold metal handle and let it creak open so I could quickly let myself pass through the gap before I let too much cold air in to the warm, confined space. The long room stretched out ahead of me and I heard nothing but a faint coughing from above me. I walked along the first room to the room I had left the children in whilst searching the house for a nurse, the nurse I had met, or any nurse.
‘Excuse me, Sergeant.’ I heard a soft female voice from the room ahead of me and saw a nurse step into the light of the room from the doorway. She smiled sympathetically and looked me up and down. ‘You are not injured.’ She sounded both relieved and pleasantly surprised, but there was something in her voice that did not hide the unwanted sight of my uniform. She smiled all the same and seemed confident that I would be polite and amiable towards her. ‘What can I do for you?’ Her English was jumpy but good, and she spoke with the accent of a Parisian woman, which reminded me of my mother when I was very young. Her hair was nestled at the back of her head in a loose bun, which let a few loops of her auburn hair dangle to her neck and collar at the back. She had unusual brown eyes which seemed to match the red tint to her hair, and they reminded me of dark cherries in her pretty face.
‘I’ve come to see the children. Can I?’ Her face changed and she stared at me. She stared at me until I felt uncomfortable and worry overcame me. ‘Are they okay? Have they left?’
‘Sergeant..’ She waited for my name.
‘Larose. Peter Larose.’
‘Sergeant Larose.’ My name sounded exotic on her lips; like a French acquaintance of hers whom she was addressing with affection. She said it with familiarity and dipped her head down to look at her hands, which were rubbing together before her slim stomach. ‘I’m afraid one of them passed away not long ago. This morning. The girls, they’re fine. Poor little darling Noel.’ She shook her head and her French words sobbed from her upturned mouth. She stepped towards me and reached for my hand. Her skin was warm and soft, and she pulled the wet gloves from my fingers and laid them down on a hot radiator beside her. ‘Petit, chéri Noel.’ She murmured, taking my hands in hers again and leading me through the door. I had nothing to say to her in return, no French nor English answer. The room was warm, it felt clammy now that I had no idea what to expect. I wanted to walk in to the makeshift hospital house and see the children eating something warm, with Isabelle in a pretty new dress, Arielle smiling at her siblings and thinking of nothing to do with her murdered parents, and little Noel having been made all better. The nurses were supposed to work their magic with love and care and cure the little boy; just like how us soldiers were supposed to work our magic and win the war. It was supposed to be that simple.
On the thin white bed in front of me sat Isabelle, a young nurse perched beside her tickling her ribs. She was wearing a cream white night dress, which had embroidered flowers around the wrists and neckline. I smiled at the sight of her and the nurse who was encouraging bursts of soft laughter from Isabelle’s mouth. Arielle was sat in a corner of the room, running a piece of cloth through her now clean hands. She had brushed her hair and it lay in straight locks down to her shoulders, the golden brown strands shimmering with cleanliness and the light from above us. I watched her look up at me and attempt a welcoming smile, but the twitch at the corner of her mouth failed and a tear ran down her cheek. Lifting my hands away from the comforting nurse I reached out and pressed my hand against Arielle’s head, feeling how soft her hair was. She reminded me of a young version of a girl I had known at university, and her features were strong yet mild and effervescent. Her eyes still swelled as I pulled her from her seat easily, with a swift movement, and took her in my arms. I told her I was sorry, how wrong it was and how sorry I was. I could not stop apologising for something that could not be helped. She sobbed on to my uniform, yet another stain added to the fabric’s fibres that would always remain, even if I forgot about it.
‘Don’t apologise. You found us and brought us here. I am just happy he did not die alone.’ She pulled away from me and pushed be back from the embrace. ‘Tell me your name; I do not know who you are yet.’
‘My name is Peter Larose.’
‘You’re French? Why do you speak with an English accent?’ She questioned me, lifting the cloth to her face and wiping the wet patches beneath her eyes. Blotches had appeared on her face, under her mouth, to the sides, and under her glisteningly wet eyes.
‘My mother was French. I lived in France until I was around ten years old and then we moved to England.’ I explained to her with a voice of a storyteller. She felt older than she was, and her young face made me feel as if I was telling her a bed time story, comforting her, though I knew she was beyond this reasoning. She had experienced much more than she should have at her age.
She stepped back to the slight shadow of the corner of the room and turned her head towards the open door to the second room. I waited for her approval and then saw her glance up with her eyes swelling into blurs of dark colour and I knew I should leave but she wanted me to see her younger brother from what I gathered. Leaving her stood with her fingers pressed tightly against her lips and chin I entered the open doorway to the silent room. There was a wooden cot in the centre of the room surrounded by emptiness in all directions. My footsteps that I had not noticed until they had become muffled were swallowed by the softness of the light blue carpet below me; blue for a boy. In a gentle bundle in the cot lay Noel’s slight body, covered entirely by the warmth of the blanket. I wanted him to be warm and comfortable, as his little body must have been aching from the hunger and the pain and the tiredness. Loosening my fist from the grip I held it in at my side, I reached in to the cot to touch the precious bundle. I did not know why I wanted to touch him, perhaps to convince myself of the reality of death so early on in the scarce lifetime. My hands felt clammy against the dry, thick material which seemed to melt and soften under my touch. He was warmer than his sister had been that day I had held her close to me in fear of losing her again. He was warmer in this unfathomable state that I would have imagined. I pictured him as a sleeping baby before me; I had never grasped the concept of death. I laid my fingertips across the soft skin of his right cheek and pressed them against him. His skin was malleable and supple. He was a pale white as if a new born snowdrop in springtime. There was still a blush to his rosy, peach cheeks. Deep black eyelashes blemished his eyelids with their perfect curls, and I ran my finger up over his entire face before suddenly choking on my own sickness. I felt stiffness in my chest and throat. The notion of a dead child twisted on my lungs and organs.
I had never known children before and these children were some of the first I had ever had close contact with. Something had given me hope with their dirty faces in the bombarded house. I forgave them. I forgave them for living through the war; I forgave Noel for dying. I pulled my hand away as I realised the cold touch of my fingers. I could not let myself suck the remaining warmth from him to myself. I felt heat in my eyelids and around my nose and cheeks and turned abruptly back to the door. Arielle was watching me with her hands pinned around her waist, crossing across her stomach, and her wrists were bent with her fingers gripping her dress. She looked so young stood in the doorway.
‘Will you come back to us after the war?’ The way she said this made me think first of the country, us as a country, and the wonderful French countryside and people that I thought she was referring to. Then I pictured the three children together. Was she asking me to return to them, to visit their country and remember nothing of the war?; or was she wondering whether I could return and enjoy the beauty and peace of the countryside in this area of the world, this corner of France that was war ridden and struck down by the pain and guilt of the war?
‘I’d love nothing more than to come back.’ And I meant it. The country felt more like home than any other, and I had always wanted to move back here since I was a child. The way I had returned this year was wrong and I knew I would be coming home another time, in a more natural way, and belong. I did not belong at the moment, and the gun I had come to know should not have been allocated to me and my French name on the French soil. I smiled at Arielle and nodded as I turned away, smiling at Isabelle being bounced on the nurses knee behind me, and left the house for the final time.

There was nothing more dull and wrenching in many ways than sitting in a hole in silence. The days of digging deep holes on beaches as children seemed unconventional and irritating now, and the sounds that entered the woods around us mimicked the noises of dying animals and birds, though the birds were scarce at this time. It was a common misconception that birds were non-existent in times of war, as their sounds emptied the sky and entered our minds. The buzzards had gathered a few days before with the smell of burning flesh from far away. They must have been passing over us when they noted the corpses from the last attack. There were many German dead lying in a steep pile of rotting flesh far over the other side of the forest and I could smell their stench from my hole. It reminded me of unclean public toilets and overflowing drains, along with the new and too familiar smell of death. I had not experienced this smell before and it wished it to never exist again. The only reason I knew that the Germans were dead and piled high was that I had heard the story from a few officers who had been there days before in an attack that my company were not part of. The buzzards swooped above us with strings and strips of flesh, rotten and green and dirt ridden, and waved it above our heads. Once, one ravished the flesh in a tree above Grewar and me and then conveniently dropped it in our view. It landed on the icy ground as we stared without care or concern for its former owner. It was as if the birds were willing us to die so that they could dig in to our fresh flesh for a good hearty, and probably still considerably warm, meal.

Far into the middle of the night after I had been sat all day long in my hole, thinning the surface of the fingertips of my gloves from constant rubbing of my upper arms and thighs, I was welcomed by a clicking sound from behind our hole. It sounded like a woman’s heels tapping across a marble floor, and the rhythm grew louder and faster as her pace picked up towards us. I turned my head steadily and stared into the thick, pure blackness, waiting for a darker shape to fiendishly appear in my eyesight, but nothing stirred. The sound continued and I searched around for its source. The sky immediately above me was illuminated and I watched a glowing firefly like ball dance down through the trees. As it came towards the ground beside where I was crouched in my fox hole it illuminated the other fox holes around me and I saw bright, wide eyes peering above the edges of the ground watching the illuminated Angel fall from above us. Eyes twinkled like curious animals in the darkness and gleamed in the light with wonder and innocent that I knew they did not contain. Another clicking begun and I continued to watch the light fall towards the ground. I knew the sound that would follow its gentle, swooping light would burst into flames and crackle on the ice. Its beauty was to give away our position. Gunfire rung around our hole and men begun to dart through the trees as I watched in awe of the lights and sounds. I felt as if something had been replaced in me and I had a new found awe for the sights and sounds of our military service. Whistling down towards the floor the light still bobbed in the darkness until it settled on the branch of a tree and hung in savoured brightness. I stirred from the dream-like state I had awoken in and lifted my head higher up to see men running through the trees like ghosts. Their figures looked transparent and I emerged from the welcomed sleep I was unaware I had found. It was hard to keep yourself in the sleeping state in the holes, for cold and fear lingered on your mind as burdens of the uniform. Any dreams were lodged into the subconscious, unable to escape into reality, as the reality trudged them down in to the snow and the mud and forgot about their existence.
Something that reminded me of the smell of cinnamon rose from the flare that surged in light before me. I repeated the practice of my gun before I jumped to my feet and clambered from the ditch wearily. Confronting the flare with curiosity that I could not kill, I approached hastily and though still steadily, before stamping the sole of my boots on the bright colour. Its red glow distinguished in the snow covered ground, I glared into the darkness that smothered running men and parched voices. Sounds of men speaking hurriedly emerged from between trees until I begun to run towards where I thought Jackson was dug in. I ran towards darkness and was swallowed by further darkness that imitated a vacuum of air. Nothing made a noise as I ran and I wondered why the blur of silence at my ears was hurting, then a sharp pain spread like veins and stems through the left side of my skull. It pressed against the inside and pulsed across my eye socket, forcing my eyelid into a frantic spasm of twitches. I held my eyes shut tightly and then pulled them open to stare at the blackness, and although I could feel myself blinking aggressively, I was not entirely sure my eyes had opened again. They felt sticky from days of interrupted sleep, and as the pain coursed around the side of my skull, I swore I could feel the thin shell of my head shattering and splintering into shards of bone. I was still running.
I tripped on a fallen tree and fell blisteringly painfully to the ground, and I felt my arm muscle that held the gun tightly in its hand cramp and seize up under my own weight. My head was still pulsing and expanding out of itself and so I lay on the ground. I could not see anything other than the faint bobbing of light that emerged between swaying trees above. The trees had been perfectly still before this moment and therefore it must have been me that was swaying in motion with the ground. I felt drunk. I felt like I had done when I had kissed Madeline on the ship and we had danced in the ‘ballroom’. I felt the blistering heat of the angry pain on the side of my head which forced my hand up to the side of my face. I felt warmth there, and moisture that seeped from high in my hairline. It was thick and slightly sticky on my greasy hair, and I fumbled with searching fingers to find its source. Shards of pain bolted to my skull again and twanged in my left eye as I unexpectedly found the gouge of skin that had been taken from my scalp. I still felt dazed and drunk from the pain and I could not think how this had happened.
Feeling the blood still seeping from my head I cursed my landing place on the cold floor and kicked the fallen tree trunk with my feet like a child having a tantrum. This angered me further as I rolled on to my side, my hand still on my wound, and dug my elbows into the hard ground to push myself up on. I pressed up and shuffled sideways a few paces on all fours, before lifting my hand and pushing off the ground as a runner would. I was ready for the sprint. I held my gun to my side with both hands and begun my run, continuing towards where I still thought Jackson would be, although by now he would have left. I had nowhere else to go and so I ran. My feet were aching from cold and wet socks which rubbed my toes together creating patches of blisters upon blisters. Racing through the trees I felt branches snap back and hit me, though my face avoided wounds as I pressed my chin against my neck and chest and manoeuvred my metal helmet over my eyes. I was entirely blind to what lay ahead. My feet caught in barbs and patches of undergrowth and I had to stumble through the problems. Chaos had emerged and died around me, and the few scattered mumbles of gunfire were incredulous and malnourished. I had not far to go if I were heading in the correct direction, and my manoeuvres caused me pain as I ran.
‘Larose! You fucking idiot, you’ve-‘
I felt the ground disappear beneath me and I tumbled into a ditch. My landing was cushioned by warmth and hunched bodies. They were entirely still and I felt my skin crawl as I imagined the death in the ditch that I had landed in, until I was grabbed around the collar and hauled into the view of the owner of the strangling hands. I let go of my gun and gripped the fingers that enclosed on my collar, and flung my head back to swing my helmet from my eyes.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Jackson spat at me, his face pressed incredibly close to my own, so close that I could almost touch his nose with mine. ‘You’ve just run across an entire assault coarse and lived to tell the story. Are you mental?’ I glared at him as he asked me this, as the preferred question would have been ‘are you okay?’
I felt words escape my mouth and heard myself mumble something incoherent and loud. My mouth struggled to form shapes and my tongue felt heavy and drowned in saliva. Jackson stared at me still and then let my collar loose. I tried again to say something to him, though nothing was formed in my brain, and nothing but sounds of gurgling and blubbering came from me. I felt the needles pricking the entire left side of my head and stabbing into my flesh. Tendrils of sharp blades of aching stretched over my head and face and then became numb. My entire body became numb and I was amazed at my own balance, until I collapsed sideways and blurted out some language I was unfamiliar with in a splutter of pain and nausea.

I was awoken frantically by my own shaking as a shudder of cold ran through me. I was hidden under a canopy of darkness and a slither of light which stung my eyes and crept down to the right of me from above. I was still in my hell hole. The pain that had managed to knock me out had deceased slightly and now a faint hum of aching pressed down on my head. Rattling of guns found my ears as Grewar pressed a sponge-like bandage across my face and up to my scalp. Mimicking a child in pain and thrashed my head from side to side slowly in order to express my pain, afraid that my mouth would abandon me again, and Grewar pressed harder. I discontinued this as he made my head throb harder and grit my teeth to create a barrier for the pain. Staring back at the face that bandaged my head, I realised that light had come to the forest and morning was greeting us. Finding something to concentrate my eyes on, Grewar’s growing facial hair which was streaked with ginger a little at the sideburns, I flexed the fingers of the hand that I had fallen on when I tripped.
‘I honestly don’t know how you did that earlier, Larose. You’re a lucky shit, do you know that? You’ve split your head open and the wounds about two and a half inches long.’ Grewar looked from the bandage that he was tying to my eyes and his own eyes widened at the mention of the extremity of my wound. He laughed as I gulped down saliva and attempted to speak.
‘How did I do that?’ Forming my words properly, my accent sounded distinguished and unfamiliar, but at least I was sure I could still use my mouth. ‘I just remember running to Jackson, then I fell, and then my mouth wouldn’t work.’ I repeated to him that I was running, and I told him that I felt the pain after I fell.
‘You must have hit something metal on the way down, but god knows, it was so dark I was surprised you even ran. We all saw you do it you know.’ He turned his head to the side and looked to the slither of light that was brightening in the hole. I thought he was about to laugh when he told me they had all seen me run like a mad man towards Jackson, but he did not. He merely stared at my face again and then glanced at my bandage. ‘Why were you running?’
‘I had to get to Jackson. I told him I hated my foxhole and he said I should make my way to his if anything happened that night. It was a joke at first, but I just decided to run.’ I felt embarrassed by own my lost cause for an excuse. I had no reason to be embarrassed in front of Grewar, or anyone else for that matter, but I felt stupidity at my actions. I had run there because my foxhole was empty, and the thought of being alone in a situation as strange as that disturbed me. It created a phobia of the war that I knew I must avoid at all costs. Nothing would be quite the same if the war had its way as nothing compared to the feeling of being completely alone.

The larger town had been constantly bombarded by bombing and German gunfire for almost a month. The houses were no longer distinguishable from the other buildings, and each one lay in a crumbled heap of stone and masonry. Splinters of wood lined the edges of the streets and had been covered in a blanket of snow which attempted to disguise the hollow destruction with its white innocence. The snow has now long melted and left the rotting carnage. The rubble that lined our entrance to the town was unnameable. The objects were no longer objects to anyone. Legs of chairs. Garden fences. Hose pipes. Everything seemed pointless. As I walked I noticed the remaining people who inhabited such a place. A man sprawled his legs over some wooden planks that had been laid together on the floor. He was wearing a white vest and dark trousers; at the top of his bicep, where the muscles were defined yet his slim structure stood out, he had tightly wrapped a piece of dark red cloth, which looked moist in the dim light of the afternoon. A small butt of a cigarette perched on his lip as he leant forward and rolled his trouser leg up. I saw a packet of cigarettes hidden in his sock which he retrieved, and also glanced many dark red scabs across his calf. The houses on the outskirts of the town were grand and beautiful; I admired the architecture with a complacent feeling of being withdrawn from the situation.
Floor to ceiling windows lined the front of the houses, a few of which had balconies with metal railings, and dying ivy crawling to the rooftops. Around the edge of the front doors were patterns in a square arrangement, as if stolen from the Greek mythology era; they were odd. There was a crowd gathering towards the end of the large open boulevard, and the pavement had been swallowed by a patter of feet. I could hear women shouting something, followed by the rev of a car engine. I lifted my head to see over the few men stood before me, and saw the crowd ballooning over the street from between the houses on each side. Approaching, the shouting increased, until we realised it was not anger we had heard but confusion.
A child was thrown out of the crowd and fell on her back, pushing her hands down on the ground and shouting out in surprise. I saw her jump back to her feet and shake the gravel and snow off, before pushing back through between two elderly men to the inner crowd. The men behind me begun to organise themselves, and then we pressed on towards the crowd.
Something was being argued over, and an engine was still revving. I heard a soldier a few years older than me trying to explain to the women in the crowd that the vehicles were leaving and they should evacuate the town. One woman began to yell at him that she had no house to live in and she was planning to leave anyway, but she was very grateful for his advice; her sarcasm was misunderstood by the soldier. He smiled patiently. The car that had been revving in attempts to resuscitate its engine burst to life and a cheer erupted from the crowd. Another car arrived just as the first left, having piled itself with too many people. The crowd slimmed down and dispersed a little and I took time to study the faces of the people. An elderly man walked slowly to lean on a wall of a house to my right and slumped backwards. His face seemed forgotten and exhausted; his time in the town might have been long. He was joined by a small child after a few moments, who left his flustered mother and older sister trying to organise their luggage on to the back of the car. The boy studied the elderly man’s pose at the wall and copied it with ease; he leant back with folder arms and dug his chin in to his chest before erupting in giggles which forced an impressed smile from the man.
The woman called to them both and the boy reached for the man’s hand before pulling him in a slanted walk towards his mother and sister. Their luggage nuzzled in the depths of the back of the truck, they climbed up in to the exposed and open back and seated themselves whilst others clambered aboard. The engine hummed and the heat rose in steam from the bonnet. The tyres juddered on the ground, and the sound was echoing through the cold air. I watched them seat themselves, the boy on the man’s knee, their faces showing something that could be misplaced as boredom. The car revved once the last woman was pulled up by stranger’s hands and then turned and drove off. I watched them leave, and each of them watched me in return. I had nothing to express to them; this was not my home. I was not being left. I had nothing here to belong to me.
We stood watching them, some men begun to speak, but a few of us merely watched the two large trucks drive away with the remaining of civilisation of the town. I felt like a thief.

I slammed my hand in to the wooden door and pushed it open with my boot. My hands were aching and I could feel a pulse in my head than shattered the casing of my skull. The cool air outside hit me in shards. It was freezing and my breath scattered before me wistfully. I began pacing along the street outside, and just walked. I sped up as I reached the end of each street so as not to think of which way to go. I took the first three rights and two lefts, followed by a straight on and then another left. I saw everything in the town in a fast motion. There were sounds of a car far away on a road somewhere and its engine hummed ever so quietly in the silent night. I heard a shout from back in the direction I had come from and then a chorus of laughter. Something smelt like iron, wet iron, and it writhed in my nostrils and mouth as I passed it quickly. My feet smashed on to the cobbled streets, until they ran out and large bricks paved my way. A stone wall, at my knee height, emerged from a larger wall and begun to follow me towards the end of the large street. At the end of the street I turned and came to an abrupt halt before the body of water. The ice around the edge was thick and white, and it thinned out towards the centre of the small lake and the absent darkness. Turning its course at an angle, the wall continued around the lake in a gentle curve. I pressed forward so I was right up against the wall and my knees could lean in its bricks. The cold of the bricks seeped through the knees of my trousers and relaxed my agitated body. I was still hot from the room of men, and the freezing air was a blessing.
I stared blankly at the water for a few moments.
Bending down on impulse, I fumbled with my hand on the floor for something to break the smooth surface before I threw myself in to stop the calm. I found a large brick that I assumed once fitted into the puzzle of the skin of a house. I lifted it in my hand, gripped it tightly so that its rough edges found comfort in my malleable skin, and launched it forward. It hurtled through the air far in to the lake and landed with an ecstasy of splash and then silence. The rippled expanded all the way to the ice which then swallowed it below the water, but the remembrance of the disturbance rocked the ice perfectly. I had cracked the silence temporarily and I felt my body relax into the silent air.
I pulled both legs up over the wall and sat down. Facing the opposite side of the flat lake I looked over the expanse of open water. It was empty and cold, dark and lonely. I was probably the only person looking at the dark water at that moment. I was the only one it existed to; I had the time and the effort to watch it. There was no time for passing in a town that was destroyed and empty.
I kicked my boot down to the drop below my feet that fell straight in to the lake, and rummaged it through the already broken ice that crawled up the stones. This knocked some shards off that skid across the intact body of ice that clawed on to the water’s slithery black skin. In the darkness I heard another chorus of laughter and the concoction of the laugher and the silence bit in to me.
My bones seemed to crack then as I heard gunfire scream in my ears.
Without thinking about my way back I began to run. The bullets burst through the air as I ran and I felt the night air burnt by the heat of the bullets. My breath advanced me and was always a step ahead. I took the first right, then a left, then another left. I had no idea where I was running to; if I had paid attention and was not entirely intent on escaping the safety of other men with other weapons I would have known where to run to. Scraping my boots on the rubble of the street I launched over the scrap wood and plaster of houses and forward. My shirt clung to my chest as I began to sweat in the cold and it stuck to me which made me even colder.
I heard shouting from somewhere; British accents. English. I ran faster and harder towards them, and dreaded falling over something like the last time I had run as fast and hard as I could. I stumbled around the final corner as the voices got louder, and slammed my body in to Evans.
‘Jesus Christ!’ He fell backwards and his hands flapped for his gun as he stared at me. It had happened so fast that my face had not registered in his fright. He stared at me blankly; then gripped my shoulder and thrust me behind him. I pushed past two other soldiers who were catching their breath in the commotion and pulled myself through the doorway to the heat of the house that just moments ago I had longed to escape before I turned in to a mad man.
Gunfire was still stammering through the outside air, and it was almost as clear in the heat and noise of the house. My ears still rung from the scream of the bullets whilst I had sat by the lake. The buzzing had commenced immediately and I could not rid my ears of the intense pressure. The house shook furiously as a grenade propelled through the plaster board walls. I fell against the wall of the stairs and backwards on to the third step where I landed with a sharp pain in my knee. A large piece of wood had cut through my trousers and torn into my flesh just below my knee. Blood already seeped out of the wound and stained the material of my dark trousers. I had to pull the wood out before I moved. Evans disappeared back in to the kitchen area and the room was full of shouting. Bursting around my head, bullets went off and another grenade hit the house next to us. I stretched my fingers over the end of the wood and readjusted my grin once, twice, three times before I settled my hands around the splintered dagger. I gripped so tightly that the wood shook with my reverberating hands; and then I pulled. The wood must have been jagged at the bottom, because it ripped out of my wound at an agonising angle. Blood seeped out faster and thicker, and of a deep crimson shade that billowed down my cold leg and in to my boot. I threw the wood away to the side in anger and an ecstasy of pain.
Grewar was shouting at me. His face contorted in the blank, dull light of the room. He slapped the side of my head and a shock ran through my nerve cells. It stung and my eyes suddenly opened to the room. He told me to wrap something tightly around my wound. I turned and glared in to the dark behind me on the stairs for something to use as a bandage. Someone had left a dish cloth on the staircase; presumably they had dropped it when the gunfire had begun. Two men stumbled down the stairs and over my legs as they ran for the door with their guns. I pulled the cloth tightly around my knee and tied it tightly in a thick knot. It stung and I swore continually, then stared back to the light that remained where I could see Grewar watching the door, his back pressed against the pale blue wall. His eyes were closed tightly and he looked ignorant to the noise. The sounds outside had died down a little more and two men appeared back in the doorway. One of them fell forward and shouted in agony as his knees smacked on the wooden floorboards. The other stared at Grewar and I in confusion.
‘Where is everyone?’ I asked, lifting myself and limping over to Grewar.
‘They’re all fucking dead!’ the man on the floor shouted to me as I stood above him, my leg still bleeding under my makeshift bandage. Grewar opened his eyes and his head fell forward.
‘They can’t always be dead,’ he sighed, ‘some of them are supposed to live, at least sometimes.’
I turned my head to look at him in the flickering light from the one remaining candle.
‘We’ve got to move out of here, if they knew we were here they might come and look for us. Come on, if anyone else has survived they won’t be returning here for a while, we’ll find them. Come on!’ The standing soldier tugged the other one up from his knees and held on to his arm.
Grewar stepped towards me and took my elbow. He gripped it tightly and I began to move, following the other two men.

The silence of the house illuminated itself to my ears. We left through a back door and followed a stone pathway to the end of the walled garden, which opened on to a thin back alley which adjoined each garden gate to the walls. In the darkness I could still tell that the gates were different colours, and some of them had rotten wood that flaked off when we brushed against them. My leg prevented me from walking properly and so I limped eagerly behind the three men, ensuring I stayed as close as possible, regardless of my pain.
The freezing cold air added to the pain of my chapped lips. I continued to lick them to keep them from stinging but it did not help. My breath escaped out of my mouth in to the cold air, puffing before my eyes and feeling warm on my face. Crunching over the frozen ground, out boots gave away our existence to anyone who might have been listening. Grewar stopped abruptly before me, following the other two men stopping, and we all turned to the right down a larger alleyway. This alleyway opened up on to a grand main street where the houses were square and tall, with metal railings and stone pathways in patterns that showed wealth. We walked along between the rows of houses on both sides of us until we found one that looked good enough to occupy; I have no idea what we were looking for. Perhaps we were judging it on the look or the railings, the state of the paint, or even the colour of the door. Some strange feeling emerged of lack of care from my part.
The two men, who I remembered as James Wright and Peter Forrester, chose a large house with a green door and pale cream walls. Its long rectangle windows were shadowed with thick curtains as I could see through the dark, and it looked like a cold, empty building perfect to commandeer. After trying the back door first, which was locked, we broke it down with a metal bin that sat beside it. This opened us on to the kitchen, which was wide and open-plan. The black counters were immaculately clean, apart from some old bread that had been left atop of one to our right. I touched this as we passed by to find it stale and hard. The cupboards were empty and had been ransacked to clear of all food by the previous owners of the house as they had left. Some tinned fruit remained in a few of the cupboards, which Grewar pulled from the cupboards as he passed and put them in to his pockets. I reached in to my pocket and produced my lighter as we delved farther in to the house, so that we could see the rooms in at least a little detail.
The green lounge had also been left perfectly clean. The sofas were olive coloured. The walls were white. The floor was mahogany. The fireplace, marble. All abandoned. The staircase was carpeted in blue carpet. Upstairs was left untouched by us, as I collapsed myself on the sofa and Grewar immediately attended to my wounded knee. The four of us slept in the room until daylight sneaked its glow through the thick curtains and the colours of the room became more intense, yet still dull in the early morning light. We ate the tinned fruit and watched each other. I found a book, written in French that had been left on the floor beside the sofa. I read for a short while until we heard noises outside of the house. Grewar stepped up towards the windows to attempt to see between the cracks of the material to see who was outside. We heard English being spoken, including atleast two British accents, but we waited in silence still. I lay across the sofa, with my leg higher than the rest of my body, as suggested by Grewar to stop the blood from flowing as it had been throughout the night; needing the bandage to be replaced twice. The voices began to approach as they wandered through the wide street. I could faintly hear a woman’s voice, and the feet crunched on the gravel of the street.
‘What should we do?’ Forrester asked, his whisper barely reaching us from where he sat at the bottom of the staircase.
‘Open the curtains, open the door, I don’t know!’ Wright said, his hissing voice penetrating the silence.
‘Well, we should tell them we’re here.’
I pulled myself from the sofa and stepped towards the front door, which, the night before, we had not noticed had been partially destroyed. It lay open now, but blocked by wood that had gathered, presumably the owners had tried to block the entrance for some reason. I pulled away a few planks of wood and as I did so I felt my leg begin to gush blood again. It swept through me in a wave of sickness as it seeped from my wound and down my calf. As I threw a last plank of wood away, I fell backwards and landed on my back. Grewar jumped up and helped me regain my stance, touching my shoulders and lifting me to me legs. As I was leaning against the wall, Wright and Forrester stepped in front of us and fell off the front step on to the street. Grewar left his hands at the back of my neck and in the middle of my back and we left the house. I heard Forrester shout to the people outside not to shoot, and I was sucked in to the light of the street. Grewar tried to lift me still but the pain in my leg forced me to fall to my knees, just as I looked up to see Madeline’s beautiful face gazing at me in terror.