Page 28 of These Old Lies
“What the hell is Villiers doing?!” Ned shouted and blew his whistle. “Retreat! Retreat!”
Charlie ignored the call. He wasn’t going to leave those boys behind.
As he edged his way forward in the mud, he wondered if this was how Ned felt when he aimed and took fire at the rocks beside the Germans that night in No Man’s Land. Like death wasn’t that scary anymore.
Charlie miraculously made it to the crater and found three terrified privates. Two of them were uninjured, but the third had a mangled mess where his left leg had been. Off to the side, Charlie spotted a fourth body, clearly dead from the way the boys were avoiding looking at it.
“Are you going to save us?” asked one of the boys, voice filled with fear. “Where are the other stretcher bearers?”
A bullet whistled by. The man on the ground screamed.
Charlie gripped the arm of the boy closest to him. “What’s your name?”
“Thomas. I mean Fletcher. Private Fletcher.” God, was this the boy’s first battle?
“I’m Private Blair,” the lad on the other side said before pointing to the man writhing in agony. “That’s Gittins.”
The past three years had given Charlie a sense of when a man had a fighting chance. There were a lot of parts of Gittins’ leg outside that should be inside, but he wasn’t past hope. The question was, could Charlie get any of them back to BEF lines?
A clammy hand reached out towards him. “I’ll only slow you down.” For a man who had been screaming only a few seconds earlier, his voice was surprisingly soft.
Charlie took a deep breath and squeezed Gittins’ hand. “Here’s what we’re going to do.” He looked Fletcher and Blair over, both of whom were white-knuckling their rifles.
Charlie mentally flipped a coin. “The shelling keeps stopping. I think theGerman gun is jamming. The next time that happens, we will have a window of a few minutes to make a run back to BEF lines. I’m going to take Gittins’ left side, and Blair, you’re going to take his right. Gittins, pass out if you can, because this is going to hurt. Fletcher, I’m going to need you to provide cover for us, in case we run into any German patrols.”
He met their eyes squarely and let none of his own doubts show through. His fears of machine guns or snipers weren’t worth talking about.
With a nod, Blair reached for his injured friend. “Gittins will make it home. We promised his mum.”
That’s the spirit, lads.
Charlie tucked himself under the man’s left arm. “On my mark, we start to run. Fletcher, you fire back towards that German line. Doesn’t matter where, but make it look impressive.”
The shelling fire continued two, three, four more rounds, when suddenly there was a break in the mechanical thunder. Charlie hoped he was right about the gun. “Go!” he yelled, and they ran out of the crater, hobbling and tumbling across the battlefield.
Charlie and Blair wound up unevenly dragging Gittins forward, their pace slow and clumsy, sliding and slogging through the mud, with Fletcher following behind. Charlie figured that every step they were making forward was one in the right direction.
“Fire, Fletcher, fire!” The sound of bullets began. Charlie had no idea if Fletcher was aiming in remotely the right direction, but any show of force was worth taking.
“I can’t…” Blair was struggling for breath under the weight of his friend.
Charlie didn’t let him finish. “Not far now!”
They must have been quite the spectacle, hobbling their way back to BEF lines, but at least it meant that orderlies were there waiting for them with an actual stretcher for Gittins when they finally slid into the trench.
Only the trench wall held Charlie from sliding to the ground when he knees started to buckle, as the reality of what they had just done sunk in. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Blair retching. As Fletcherstarted to move past him, Charlie reached out to grab his shoulder. “Who was the other body in the crater with you?” Charlie tried to make sure to report the dead when he could, especially when they weren’t able to bring back a body.
The boy wearily looked at Charlie as if he had forgotten how words worked. Charlie was about to give up when Blair answered in a hoarse voice.
“Sergeant Henderson.”
???
The only light in the dark canteen was the golden red of Charlie’s cigarette.
Someone entered. Charlie didn’t bother to turn around to know it was Ned. “With a sniper shot to the chest, he probably never knew what hit him.”
“He’s still fucking dead, though.” Charlie tried to muster more anger into the words. He didn’t have the energy to mourn John Henderson tonight. He wasn’t sure if he ever would.