Excerpt: Temple of the Jaguar God. Zach Neal.

Hamble, a bit of a ruffian.

Zach Neal

They were in the sixth form at Rugby. The end of term was coming up fast.

Hamble, a year older, threw the letter down, and stared off into space.

“What an extraordinary fellow.”

They’d been having a bit of a nosh-up in the privacy of Jeremy’s room. The two of them had pooled all kinds of hoarded private tucker when Hamble, who always had his nose into everything, scooped up what was another fellow’s private and personal mail. He was a big, hulking fellow with a heart of gold. Jeremy was grateful for his odd friendship—and a bit of protection.

“Floreat Rugbeia. Yes, he did say that.” Hamble shook his head in disgust at the fancy, monogrammed letterhead. “Fellow of the Royal Society, member of the Explorer’s Club.”

Throwing his feet up on the coffee table, he stuck his hands into his waistcoat pockets in a characteristic pose.

“Hah.”

Hamble was from a family of genteel county aristocracy, at least to hear him tell it, up Shropshire way. He could be, or beat on a ruffian whenever he wanted to, which was as often as he thought no one was looking and he could get away with it. Not so much evil, as amusing, thought Jeremy. And why not. Other than school, this part of the world—Rugby School in Warwickshire, was as boring as any other place he’d ever been. To be fair, that wasn't all that many places.

Uncle Harry, Dr. Harold C. Fawcett, Ph.D., was an alumni of their good old alma mater. Not that Jeremy Crowe was so fond of it. Not hardly, always with the low grades, and not a snow-ball’s chance of shining at either the letters or the games. If it wasn’t for Uncle Harry, Jeremy wouldn’t even be here. The financial support was more than welcome. Otherwise he would have to go out and muck and toil for his livelihood, something Jeremy wasn’t all that enthused about. He was still young enough to dream of better things.

Rugby school.

Harry was his mother’s younger brother and had made his fortune quite young, with a fortunate dig in Mesopotamia.

To be good at games was everything, but sweat and strain as he might, run like hell after the ball, bigger fellows, not all of them older men, made him look decidedly sick.

“And he’s a doctor?”

“Yes. Of a sort.”

“Are you going?”

Jeremy raised his eyebrows.

“Egads. I hadn’t really thought all that much about it—” There was that family connection, and some sense of obligation.

Something he’d always hated.

“Well, you’d better make up your mind. Pretty damned quick, old cock.”

“Yes! I suppose I should.” Jeremy raised the tea cup and drained it.

Hungry as always, no matter how much he ate, it never seemed to translate onto his lanky five-foot, eight-inch frame.

Flipping his hair out of his eye, Jeremy picked up the letter and read that last part again.

“Wire me soonest. Will provide money and tickets. We leave from Southampton on the ninth. You have to do something for the summer holidays and this is the opportunity for a little adventure. Yours, your Weird Uncle Harry.”

He sighed, deeply. The thoughts of another long and lonely summer at home in Norfolk drained his resistance. Stuffy country society versus the Spanish Main—or so it seemed.

His mother fussing around, all things great and small, and his father’s evil eye upon him.

Disapproval, questions, what is your big plan in life young man—

Disapproval versus the Spanish Main.

Hmn.

Perhaps not—

Harry was at least fun, the bugger always had been.

“Huh. I suppose there’s nothing else for it.”

Venezuela—some sort of mad archaeological expedition. The Temple of the Jaguar God.

And why not?

Why not indeed.

Harry always had been his favourite uncle.

Last Christmas, the last time he’d been around the manor, Jeremy’s facetious name for his father’s rectory, he’d been spouting Lewis Carroll.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.”

One thing he knew for sure—his father would always be poor.

If he wasn’t careful, so would he.

(End of excerpt, the story is 'The Temple of the Jaguar God', an homage to the Boys Own Paper of a more innocent age. > Ed.

Soloing on a Henry Farman Shorthorn.

Henri Farman Shorthorn training aircraft. (Wiki.)

by Zach Neal

A group of us stood watching on the badly cracked paving outside the hangar. This lad by the name of Harry volunteered to be first, in fact he insisted.

He had a strong desire to prove he could fly. That’s what the rest of us thought.

We all thought we could fly, although a good number did show some signs of a very rational nervousness. The instructors had given us all about two or three hours of time in a dual-seat Farman. These planes, the ones the instructors used, had slightly more powerful motors, and they were a lot newer to boot.

When the instructor took off, we sat and watched how they moved their hands and feet as the plane responded. It wasn’t exactly dual control.

Harry was quickly strapped in. There was some nervous chatter as we patiently waited our turn.

The motor was running loudly in our ears, and the blast from its prop put up a lot of dirt and crud in the air. It stung the eyes. You could feel the grit, and it was necessary to blink and turn away.

Our classmate Harry put on the gas and she moved away. He was blasting it as hard as it would go. This was a tired old machine, and the supposedly seventy horsepower motor was marking time as it built the revs. Harry trundled along, and you could see the wing tips going up and down in some syncopated beat, a tin-pan-alley kind of beat.

The plane staggered into the air. I checked my watch again, out of habit, the man had taken so long to get going. He was waiting so long to pull up. He had taken off at ten fifty-three a.m.

We watched the back end of Harry’s plane. It bobbled in left and right bank and with wings waggling, he beat through the turbulence over the long line of trees at the aerodome’s verge.

“Hold her, laddy…”

“How high is he, sir?”

“Shush, boys!”

“Looks like about one fifty,” I murmured to tow-headed little Dicky.

Dick Littlehampton, nice fellow from Exeter. He was nineteen, I was seventeen and a half, but had lied about my height. Hah! That’s a joke. Yet I stood as nervous as anyone else as we watched Harry diminish in size over the south. Then he tried to turn.

He almost made it.

He must have been about a hundred eighty feet.

“NO-o-o-oh!” ground out the instructor. “Shit!”

Harry had turned left, and was diving into the turn, he was ninety degrees through the turn and coming back around. The top of the wings and tail were about all of the plane

that was visible, as the booms are just framework.

The tail wind. The tail wind was such that the plane had dropped out of its flying speed range…it would only go so fast, and could only go so slow without falling out of the air.

Harry smashed into the tree line after disappearing in a heart-thudding beat of time. A frozen mental image that will stick with me forever. Harry crashed at about ten fifty-four and thirty seconds a.m.

We stood quiet as the instructor slumped his shoulders and wouldn’t look at us for some long moments. We could hear a siren’s wail and the sound of engines and voices calling from three quarters of a mile off, but the voices carried on the wind.

Smudges of black smoke streamed up and over the windbreak of tall spruces or firs or something. There was a farm over there. We used to go over to the fence and talk to the horses sometimes, at least I did.

“All right, who’s next then?”

He looked at the list on the clipboard in his hand.

“Alexander.” A quiet lad of rakish slenderness stepped forward.

He snapped off a quick salute and pathetically stood to attention, and it looked as if his knees were about to give out on him. He’s ready to shit his pants.

“What did he do wrong, Alexander?” sighed the instructor. “And relax, would you?”

“He turned too soon,” said the boy. “Not enough height.”

“Do you think you can do any better?”

He didn’t want to send anyone that’s not ready. Or didn’t he care anymore? He seemed kind of burnt out to me, but then I’d seen it before.

The rest of us paid rapt attention to every word, every comment, every inflection, every nuance. We moved along the line to another machine that the mechanics were busy preparing.

Alexander took a hell of a long time to fasten up his flying suit. To get the gloves, and the fastenings just right. The poor guy was borderline hyperventilating.

“Next one better get ready,” suggested the instructor.

A boy started, flushed, and looked guilty. A lot of eager beavers here today.

Alexander was in the hot seat. The prop was flipped over and it was time for his initiation.

We watched it warm up for a while, it was a strangely subdued bunch of lads. We know this had to be done, and that it would be our turn soon. Yet we felt curiously detached from Alexander.

It’s like watching a lab rat.

His engine revved up and he was moving across the grassy aerodrome.

The plane pulled up to ten feet, and dove down five, then back up to about fifteen or twenty. The engine burbled along, and we all thought he was smart to pick up as much speed as he could.

He was approaching the tree line, and just when we expected him to pull up and out, the engine note died down suddenly and he flopped the plane down and it went sliding towards the trees.

There was a crunching sound, and there was the impression of a big heavy object, dark and limp, flung out of the machine as it hit.

“Fuck,” said the instructor.

It’s difficult to say if Alexander throttled back in panic, or if the motor just coughed at a bad time.

All right, who’s next?”

We moved along to the next Henri Farman.

It was one of our reserve machines, a spare we kept around in case a plane broke down and was taken out of service. Soon another lad strapped in and with heavily-beating hearts we watched his takeoff.

This time the man got it right. He made the turn from an altitude of at least five hundred feet, although we held our breaths when he lost a good two hundred or two fifty in the turn. His plane roared overhead as he passed down the runway at about three hundred feet.

“Yay!” some guys yelled.

“Shut up!” bellowed the instructor, but they couldn’t restrain themselves.

“Shut the hell up!” he barked in anger.

Finally the noise faded into sullen silence, a silence which became suddenly ominous with the realization…

The lad did not return. He’d gone behind us somewhere, muffled or blocked by the hangars lined up in a row. He must have made the second turn, right?

But we never saw him again. The next two guys seemed to do better, and made a successful take off and circuit. They both made a successful landing. Then it was lunch.

After lunch, it was a couple of more boys, with one more crash, then it was my turn.

Well. I must say, it had in fact been quite educational. Watching all them other guys, man, if I have to fly a dozen miles, I don’t plan on doing that. My guts flipped over a few times when he pointed at me, but then the calm came. I noticed a new sticker on the side of the engine casing, and it somehow reassured me. A little.

When you stand beside a plane, you can hear certain things in the engine noise, when you sit right in it, it’s pretty loud and anonymous.

Tweaking the throttle a few times, I waved the men away from the front of the wings.

As she idled, I pulled my mask down and gave the instructor a big smile.

“Relax, you’ll live longer,” I told him in a shout.

He didn’t smile, just nodded.

“Make us proud, boy,” he mouthed at me.

I could barely hear him. I had my motivation, as the actors say.

They really are just children, aren’t they.

***

I checked the windsock, advanced the throttle gently, firmly and in a linear fashion.

Not jerky. Feel the power and watch the little clumps of grass begin to pass by under me.

At some point the breeze begins to tug at your clothing. Watch the speedometer.

Hmn. I should have asked the mechanics if it was a good one. No time for thinking, things are beginning to happen.  She felt light, and I wanted to hold her down till she reads forty-seven on the dial, if not even a little more. But she was definitely up now.

The wings rocked but it’s insignificant. I don’t even try to steady it, for the plane has dipped first one way then the other. But it almost corrects itself. The plane is a smooth four feet up from the grass, and so I took it back another notch on the elevator. Smoothly, yet pretty slowly she picks up more altitude. At this point I was looking at treetops about one hundred yards away, and realized the thing has made it up to about twenty five or thirty feet. I risked taking a look down and over the side.

It was deceptive. I certainly wouldn’t like to fall from even this low height. Yet it was also clear to me that I would in fact clear the trees. The speed picked up a smidgeon, and the trees passed below me. The thing bucked a little. My heart skips, but no problem.

I already knew there’s bumpy air here.

The altimeter wasn’t even registering, so I just held the throttle tight against the stops and waited some more. The speedometer registered an even forty-eight, so I nudged just a tiny little bit of up elevator out of it.

The engine roared. Sitting there, I risked a backwards glance. I wondered if those other guys felt this sense of triumph. My altimeter showed about two hundred feet, and so for a moment I studied some houses below me. What an odd perspective. And how small they get so quickly. The buildings seem flat from above, a two-dimensional world.

The plane achieved an altitude of about three hundred feet. The village was coming up. Without even really thinking about it, just a touch on the rudder pedals. Zoom directly down the full length of the High Street, past the church steeple. I wished I had more throttle, it would be nice to make more noise if possible. It was possible to see a number of people coming out of doorways and looking up at me. Children in a lane-way, under a line of trees, waved and shouted. I could see them jumping up off the grass as if to reach out and touch me.

Glance at the clock, forty-nine knots, four hundred feet, two-fifteen p.m. The village is about two miles down the road from the gate. We walked it once or twice.

“Focus, Mister!”

I felt like God up there. I knew I could do this, everyone else showed what not to do. The plane seemed strong, and the Henri Farmans weren’t known for their neck-snapping acceleration. The key thing is not to panic. To stay ahead of the plane. To anticipate that it stalls if you go too slow, or turn too tight…

The altimeter said six hundred, better keep an eye on that thing. Yet I had a full tank of fuel. I knew exactly where I was. There was a girls school up there somewhere, where the little stream went under the trees and entered the forest.

They were out playing field hockey and I wished I could tip my hat to them, but it was too tightly strapped on. I waved and a couple of girls waved back, and I could see the matron sternly stride forward with her mouth opening up. Nothing wrong with my eyes.

I’ve been up for what seems like ten minutes. I doubt the instructor will give me shit if I bring it back in one piece.

At this point, it might just make his day...

A gentle turn, wide, maybe a quarter of a mile wide, as I centred up on the road that led to camp. Soon the guardhouse and the gate were in view. On my left the aerodrome proper, with its long line of hangars, and a small and intense group of individuals standing in front of a row of aircraft just like this one.

I gave the rudders a kick and waggled at them briefly. Hope they saw me.

I put down and then up into it, and bucked like a steer being roped or a horse being broken. I put in left rudder and did a circle over the field, and came out of it again right over the guard houses. To be honest, I was delaying my landing for some reason.

I just didn’t want to come down. And then to have to stand there, and watch the others fly. One at a time, will he live or will he die? Very depressing, very hard on the back and legs. Your feet just ached sometimes.

Finally it was time to reduce the throttle. With a thrill I recognized that she responded like any other machine. She does what should be expected. She began to gently and slowly descend, and I stared at the throttle lever, trying to memorize just where it should be set.

Might need that information tomorrow. And ‘we’ touched down about seventy yards from the class watching on the concrete. I throttled way back, there was no sense in crashing into them or the hangars. I brought her gingerly to a stop, only ten yards from where it had started.

And that was my first flight in a Farman Shorthorn. Ultimately it turned out to be a very dangerous plane, for our side, anyway. I think the Germans should have pitched in and bought us a lot more of those trainers. They might have won the war.

The first Canadian Division loaded up thirty thousand men and sailed across the Atlantic. And due to training accidents and a lot of sickness, they had suffered ten percent casualties, more than ten per cent, before they even got to France.

The Allied flying services took about fourteen thousand casualties during the war.

They say about eight thousand of those casualties were in training. I’m just glad I wasn’t one of them. 

Judging by what I saw, the figures seem accurate enough.

END

Christmas 1915

by Zach Neal

Joy to the world. The words echo in my head, a mockery of the vista that greeted my eyes. 

Already the cold had soaked into my very soul, into every pore, every cell, muscle fibre and bone.

Christmas 1915. Have you ever spent Christmas underground? Or in a trench, gazing out at midnight over No Man’s Land? When the only Christmas illumination is a flare, hanging in the sky for a brief moment, throwing into sharp relief every pimple, every pus-filled wound in the bosom of the Earth?

I was glad to be on guard duty. Christmas Eve, it was so much easier to take than sitting in our cold, smoke-filled dugout where everything, every little piece of garbage and trash ended up in our home-made stove. Where everyone smoked all the time, from dawn to dusk. Where your eyes literally stung all the time.

Where everyone took turns to read a letter from home, except me.

Where every one tried so hard to cheer everyone up. Where fake smiles tried to tell lies that the eyes could not conceal.

She gave us smokes, nice little tins. The Queen Mother. Embossed, stamped with a design, a gift from the monarch to her humblest servants. You know: Georgie Porgie’s mum.

Smoking keeps up your morale, it’s warm, familiar, and you control when you smoke.

No one can tell you not to smoke when you advance at twelve paces to the minute.

No one is there to tell you not to smoke as you huddle in a hole, wondering where the rest of the company might be.

Is there a company left? Are you the only one? Is the enemy going to use gas again this time? When will we be able to smoke again? Only living people can smoke, and so we smoke as a reminder that we are not dead yet.

Who is that?

Just a friend, going to use the latrine, our concession to “sanitation.” It only works a certain times -- no rain, for example; or no recent bombardments. “Cold, eh?”

“Tough shit,” he replies without a trace of humour or “good cheer,” yet neither is there any rancour. It is simply a fact.

“Tough shit,” I agree. May as well skip the small talk.

The moon is out. Clouds scud by, and shadows creep across the land.

On the one hand, I like to keep my head down. German snipers don’t take Christmas off. A guy in the next company found out the hard way this morning.

He was drunk. He stood up carelessly, thoughtlessly. That’s all it takes. Now he is dead.

There is somebody out there, yet the nature of the noises they make tells me it is a Boche stretcher party. Sometimes I wish I dared to go out there and talk to them.

“Take your time,” I would tell them.

“I won’t start anything.” It would be appreciated, by the German stretcher party, I’m sure. It must be nerve wracking to wonder who’s on the parapet tonight and what kind of a mood they might be in.

They are brave men, undoubtedly frightened men. They try to get their comrades out of the muck, and to bring them back, alive, wounded; or dead.

They wish to give the dead a decent Christian burial. That’s right; the Huns are Christians too, just like us. Just exactly like us…don’t tell anyone I said that.

There is no such thing as a “Christian” burial out here, but they try.

I don’t understand people some times. Well, they try hard.

Several days ago I saw a cemetery that had suffered during a bombardment. Not a pretty sight, for most of the corpses were recently buried…”and the dead shall rise again.”

Who would have thunk it?

Will angels fly over the battlefield tonight? Will my mail come someday? Will I get shot? How about a nice little leg wound? That would be nice, take me out of here. Any goddamned place. Any place at all, except a prisoner of war camp. I have too much hate for that. I doubt if I could swallow it all and survive in there. Who would want to?

I squat down for a smoke. You can see a man smoking for miles, under certain conditions, I have shot at the most indirect little glow a hundred yards away. It reminds them.  Be careful. I ain’t always so nice. God, let me out of here. Any fucking way…

You can’ t be too careful around here. Even the smell of tobacco can help a man who wants to kill you. I never pop my head up over the same look-out spot twice.

Fuck, it is cold. Luckily for us. The crap in the bottom of the trench freezes, it is easier to lay the duckboards. Things around here smell better. Not much, but better.

Christmas. Jesus. Where was I a year ago? I thought I was lonely then. Now I’m lonely.

Scared, too. Not many guys are going to live through this one. The numbers don’t lie. Ten percent casualties…that’s a lot. Especially once or twice a week…how long can it go on? Twenty per cent casualties? Once a month? How long can it go on?

A major campaign is coming up. Casualties of 50% in some units are expected? How long can it go on? Don’t ask me. I know I will not be there to see the end of it all.

Some guy, I can’t remember his name told me to think like that. It is easier, and he was right.

He died soon after of some flux or pneumonia thing. I am not a doctor, so there you go.

The hours pass, and I just keep moving. Exhaustion is a constant companion. The enemy knows we need to sleep. We know he needs to sleep. The artillery rounds go back and forth, messengers of hate. Somewhere they have it written down, the policy on shelling.

“Strategy is when you never let the enemy know you are out of ammunition, but keep on firing,” it’s probably in the “General’s Handbook.” I like that one, I’ll tell it to Pete later. Anyone else who’s awake. It seems genuinely funny. Not good to be seen or heard giggling out here, your friends have enough worries.

Never let them see you low on shells. How do you do that? Never let them see you stop firing. And they played by the same rule. Lots and lots of bombs and shells sitting around in the rain, snow and sleet, gathering rust, no good to anyone that way.

That’s something I can tell you for sure about our enemy. They have enough shells on hand to “waste” several an hour. Our boys send back several an hour. Plenty of shells for everyone, no need to panic, you’ll get yours. Just be patient. Sign up early, avoid the June rush, as some wag had said, once upon a time.

We know they’re still there. Haven’t run away in the night. Haven’t gone home to be with their families for Christmas.

I wonder what mom is doing, my dad, where is he right now. My brothers will be with Mom, I hope, no way to know for sure. My mail isn’t getting through, most of the other men have been getting theirs , but several of us are in the same  boat. “Up shit creek without a paddle,” as the boys used to say when we smoked in the woods beside the school house at our lunch hour. Don’t get caught boys; there are snipers out here now.

Did I run away from home to escape something? What about my Uncle Ed? When his dad died, he was quite a young man. My grandpa died, Uncle Ed was seventeen. He took over the little family business, the family tombstone business, that seems fucking ironic, here in northern end of the battle line. He looked after his mother, (my Grandma) helped her to raise his younger brothers and sisters and now Uncle Ed helped look after my mom. My brothers and our little piss-pot of a farm.

Ed never got married, never had a home of his own. Never even changed the name of the business; it still had grandpa’s name up there. Never moved the location, never even got rid of the old wagon or bought any new tools.

He just picked up where Grandpa had left off and got on with it.

Did Ed ever think of “running away?”

Did Ed think of “joining up” and going off to war? I bet he did, I thought with a curious, silly grin.

No one can tell you the truth if you don’t want to listen.

My old man, when I went to see him in Richmond, at the farm equipment dealership where he was the sales manager and part owner; he told me, “Don’t be a fool.”

“They’ll ask for you when they need you,” (he was right about that.)

All my friends were signed up, were about to sign up, or hoped to obtain parents permission to sign up, or had devised; or where in the process of devising; all sorts of stratagems to get past any block or hindrance to signing up.

There is a momentary sucking sound, about fifty yards in front of me. It stops, starts, stops, starts, then fades away. Sounds like the German stretcher party found yet another one. Good for you, take him home to where he belongs…no one who has seen it considers that any man should have to bear this, yet bear it we must.

There is only one way to go home, for most of us here.

Every so often I move to another position, wondering if this is the time when some cagey bastard will have his sights lined up on this particular notch in the indistinct wall of sand bags, tree trunks, and earth, earth, earth.

I smoke about eight cigarettes for every four hours on guard.  I don’t smoke at half-hour intervals. I might smoke one now, one in fifteen minutes…or better still, seventeen minutes, then another in forty-two minutes.

You know me, “Always thinking.”

I listen well. Indistinct as a sound may be, if you carefully and quietly move your position, maybe you can hear it some more, and triangulate the source.

If it gets too close, then worry. What if a flare pops off behind my head, and silhouettes me against the sky? Your ears are very important, more than some will ever know. I worked one summer in a sawmill. I wore ear plugs. Most of the guys didn’t. Most men are fools, aren’t they? I have noticed that. Don’t get me wrong: it’s all just a part of the grand spectacle of life. I love them just the same, in spite of all the trouble they have caused me and sometimes you have to kill some of them. That’s just the way it is. There is no morality anymore, and why pretend otherwise?

So don’t try to fucking lie to me. Lie to someone else. But not me.

Always aware. My heart pounds, and I try not too breathe too loudly. Someone might hear.

My very breath can give me away. If an enemy raiding party is out there, they are being  damned quiet about it.

I relax and move on somewhere. It is not a game, I do not do it to pass the time or keep warm. Our very lives depend on it. I know too well, from experience, just how a trench raid is conducted. Oh no, it is not a pretty thing. Carried out in a quiet and efficient manner, it is short, sharp and brutal.

You don’t need guns if you get up close. A rifle is useless at night in close quarters, unless a man really knows what he is about. A shovel is best…a shovel, sharpened like an axe. In the trenches, the shovel is man’s best friend, not the dog, not the pipe, not the rifle, that’s for sure.

A rifle is not much use against the enemy artillery, or our own, for that matter. Only the shovel can save us.

We read the “Merchant of Venice” in school. Shylock, he couldn’t get justice, because the magistrate ruled, that he did not have a right to spill a drop of blood in the taking of it. Even though the magistrate admitted Shylock was entitled to the “pound of flesh.”

The teacher taught us; “you can’t get your pound of flesh without spilling a drop of blood,” i.e. revenge is bad. Well, tell me something I don’t know.

Did she miss the point? What is justice? A man is arrested for burglary…he is sent to jail. Maybe he did it, let’s say.

Now his wife and kids have to go hungry. There’s your drop of blood, Your Honour.

There’s your drop of blood. And why did he have to steal in the first place? Is it because he couldn’t feed his wife and kids? Every crime is a political statement. Even Jack the Ripper knew that. Shakespeare knew it too.

There is no justice, that is the truth. And that is why wars happen.

Without looking, without counting, I would bet there are ten thousand guys out here all within a half dozen miles each way. Yet the night is deadly still, as I feel the tiny lick of snowflakes on my face, up around my eyes which are the only things exposed.

And not one of them had any choice in the matter.

Right here, right now, I am the only justice, I am the only God. And I choose…to hold my fire. I think I’ve seen that fat-faced mutt before, he was kicked in the butt by a “Fritzie” corporal one day. I almost feel like that one’s a buddy.

The moon has gone again. You ought to be more careful, fat-faced man.

The enemy stretcher party has moved away, and now would be the time for a raid; they probably co-ordinate things like that, it only makes sense. But I hear nothing.

The sergeant passes by. He never talks to me out here, but he has to check on some of the men, and it is his duty after all. He would prefer not to have to, no doubt. Sarge isn’t such a bad guy once you get to know him. He has a wife and three kids…and would like to see them again.

My watch, it tells me there is one hour to go, then I can sleep for a while, and thank God for that.

Sleep is the last refuge of the truly unhappy.

I wonder when my mail will come. Maybe never.

Fuck.

They say – I think it was St. John of the Cross, “Salvation can be gained through suffering.”

Are you sure? Times like this a man would welcome a transfer to submarines…it would be warmer and drier. A transfer? Where would I go? Out of the frying pan and into the fire…right? Who knows. It just might be worth it, to be warm and dry for a while.

Even if it’s just for a little while.

END

A Sickly, Yellowish Cloud.

Second Battle of Ypres, Richard Jack.

by Zach Neal

Ultimately heroes are not born, not made, but manufactured. I won the Military Medal at Ypres. April 22, 1915. I was one of the few left standing with a rifle in my hand when

relieved. Almost everyone else was dead, wounded, missing, gone insane, or had run away.

Can’t say as I blamed them, wish I had run myself.

I recall standing on the parapet, looking through our set of  periscope binoculars.

The horror sticks in your mind forever, it’s a gift that keeps on giving. Having joined the Royal Army, and then finally transferred back into the Canadian Army, having luckily gotten into a good unit, the strange thing is that I had become somehow comfortable.

The Brits are all right, don’t get me wrong, but it was good to be back with Canadians.

We had a different outlook, there wasn’t such a great gulf, neither social nor intellectual, between officer and enlisted men. Having discovered incompetent officers in every army, ultimately, what difference does it make? A truly competent officer is a rarity.

My platoon was fortunate enough to occupy a very small rise in the earth. We were close to the French Colonial troops; when we heard yelling and looked to see what was what.

And there it was, the first gas attack in history.

A sickly, yellowish cloud, a hundred yards high, and a half a mile long, was being slowly pushed by the light breeze towards us. The Germans had waited a long time for the wind to be just right, but at first, there was only an uneasy feeling. It just seemed to spring up out of the ground over at the enemy side of the lines; long, thin streamers merging into one hellish, foul, fog.

While it was certainly far from benevolent looking, there was a little sense of dread.

But we also wondered, “What’s the big deal? Smoke is just smoke.”

Dread, fear of the unknown, a queasy, sinking feeling in the guts. A watery, gassy feeling in the guts…

Firing reached a crescendo as the rising cloud of bilious, horrid gas rolled over the French, and the Canadians on our left.

We could see the tops of heads bobbing along in a traverse behind us and off to our left.

“Where the fuck are they going?” someone asked even as the sound of shouting, screaming, yelling came to us; and more of that terrifying cloud obscured our view.

Darker now, blocking out the sky, cutting off the light. Behind us.

Confusion. Had they been ordered to retreat? What were our orders? We began to shoot into the front of the cloud as it rolled onwards, coming inexorably towards us.

A faint smell…like a public swimming pool? Household cleaner? Horrible recognition, that we are all about to die. Like a hammer in the guts. Heart pounds, out of control. A smell like really bad medicine.

The sounds of rifle and machine gun fire beside us reached a peak, then rapidly began to drop. Nowadays, just doing a little house-cleaning can bring back that day in a strange, fragmented clarity.

There was a huge, great silence to our left, as our own fire slackened…

Whoever was retreating along that trench, they were screaming in mad panic now.

A sense of dread. Hell is upon us.

Fifty yards.

Certain death looms before us, we know that now.

The man beside me dropped his rifle,  the was shooting quite far away, on our left.

He got up, and tore at his straps, the nearest escape trench only five yards away.

He took off down the trench, and I stared at his back, bemused by this strange and bizarre sight. Coughing, off to the left. A half a dozen black troops, in their colourful kepi or fez hats, the bright uniforms, staggering along, clutching, tearing at their throats.

They shouldn’t have come this far into our area…were they lost? I remember that thought.

A couple of more guys got up and ran, but took their guns with them. The black men were falling down in the trench twenty yards from my position, eyes bugging out, choking, coughing, retching, and the smell was stronger. A wisp of foggy, dense vapour. The view to the left was blocked, and thank God.

In those few short seconds, I saw more than enough to last me a lifetime. A lifetime of nightmares.

I could hear our Colonel shouting something incoherent.

Don’t remember going there, but I found myself and a half a dozen other men in a field, shooting into the flank of the German advance. Huge clogs, bulky gobs of mud made it hard to run. My feet felt like lead, my heart pounded in my throat. It was hard to get enough air…fear almost overwhelmed me.

The sheer horror of the unknown.

This is when I learned that fear turns a man’s guts into a liquid.

I have no idea how I survived that day. The gas must have been thinner, for I only gagged once or twice, feeling the sharp tang in my throat. Holding my breath, I just tried to sidestep around the wispy patches as they passed around our little clump of men, busy loading and firing, loading and firing. Some guy beside me, hoarse with fear…

A man I had never seen before, but wearing my unit’s patches, falling down.

Writhing in agony, again the tearing at the throat.

The look, as he stares in my eyes, he wants me to help him, help him, and there is nothing I can do, just load and fire, load and fire. A cloud envelopes me, and I stagger out of it, eyes running with tears, nose and mouth burning…I puked up, it was all over me; I don’t think it was much gas, I think it was sheer horror, fear, the fear of breathing.

I have never known anything like it, before or since.

Cursing, quavering, quacking in sheer terror, stuttering and stammering out defiance and loathing, as my shaking hand rams another clip into place…my left arm so tired the rifle kept lowering itself against my will. Puking and crying and trying to stay upright.

Firing down into Germans…must have been another little piece of high ground, this time about twenty of us, load and fire, load and fire…the Boche scream and shout and we just ignore the pleas and keep on firing…

I have no idea of how I survived that day.

I have no idea why they gave me that fucking medal.

But I will say this: Don’t use our pain to justify your degeneracy, don’t defile our graves with your lousy posturing, and don’t use our sacrifice to back up your mealy-mouthed fucking hypocrisy.

I heard a man say once, “The press takes a photo of a burning village, and it gives ‘destroy’ a bad name…”

The press is not entirely useless, it seems.

Someone, some men led me to a rear area.They pried the gun out of my hands.

They cut my clothes from my body, led me to a field shower, and scrubbed me with rough brushes in the bitterly cold water. There was some pain as the dried shit pulled some of the hair off my legs. And then they put me on a stretcher.

Someone gave me an injection.

I was asleep in about four seconds.

I think I’d had enough, for one day.

END