Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

‘Almost worth it – to get rations like this.’

‘Ready?’

‘Get it over with.’

Reynolds sat his whole weight on Penn’s shoulders, twisting himself sideways so that he could press his huge hands over Penn’s elbows. The field dressing came off with a quick rip and Barnes used antiseptic cotton wool to sponge off a mess of ooze. Then he reached for the knife in the boiling water: he was using Reynolds’ sheath knife, a knife the driver kept honed sharp as a razor, the point like a needle. Barnes took a deep breath, he wanted to get this over with quickly.

It took him five long minutes, and whether this time was longer for Barnes or Penn no one would ever know. Only Penn experienced the searing, agonizing, hellish pain which went on and on, stabbing and gouging into the ultra-sensitive wound like a red-hot poker, then turning and grinding and driving deeper and deeper until he thought that he must have reached the ultimate of all pain, only to feel through the burning hot scalpel another wave of torture twisting and disembowelling flesh which had become a million times more sensitive to even the lightest of touches, let alone to this fiendish probe which was thrusting and tearing right through his body until his brain pleaded and screamed for relief, for death, for anything but a continuation of this incredible agony…

Barnes drew the knife firmly between bullet and bone, and the scrape of knife on bone brought on the ultimate agony for Penn. He really felt that his entire shoulder was being amputated with a blunt butcher’s knife. Moaning horribly, as he had been doing for several minutes, he buried his fingers deep in the ground, biting his teeth together like a steel vice. In some superhuman way he was still managing to keep his tongue at the back of bis mouth, knowing in a strangely disembodied corner of his brain that he was in grave danger of biting clean through his tongue. And at that moment Barnes remembered and his hand almost slipped. He’d forgotten. He should have rammed a handkerchief into Penn’s mouth. He’d bite his tongue in half. He couldn’t stop now. He pressed the knife in deeper between bone and bullet, not realizing that it may have been this omission which kept Penn sane and conscious – the knowledge that he must protect his tongue, keeping it well back, well back. And in his stupefied state Penn had no idea that Barnes was in trouble: ‘the bullet wouldn’t shift. He had cut all round, he had loosened it from the bone, he had prised underneath, but the bullet simply wouldn’t shift. Then he heard the planes coming.

Glancing up he saw the flight of Messerschmitts. They were flying in formation about a thousand feet above the ground, their course roughly parallel with the road. Without hesitation Barnes put his head down and went on with his task, refusing to allow the oncoming roar of the engines to divert him. Penn had his fingers dug deep in the groundsheet now, turning his head from side to side as he moaned quietly like an animal in its death throes. Reynolds was leaning his whole weight on the elbows, and he hadn’t looked up once when he heard the planes coming. If it was all right with Barnes it was all right with him. They were almost overhead now, and then they sped past, unaware of the drama below. Barnes took a deep breath, said Sorry, laddie under his breath, and scooped much deeper, turning the knife with great deliberation, then he hoisted. The bullet flicked up-from his knife and landed on the groundsheet. Done it!

As he disinfected, sponged, and dressed the wound he tried to tell Penn that it was all over, that it was all right now, but Penn was too far gone to understand. Barnes applied the dressing quickly but carefully, feeling an enormous wave of relief, and then a wave of fatigue swept over him and he nodded to Reynolds to get up as he gripped Penn’s left arm.

‘It’s done, Penn. The bullet’s out and I’ve put a fresh dressing on. It’s all right, Penn.’

Penn turned his head, his eyes dazed, his face wet and drawn, looking at Barnes without seeing him.

‘It’s all right now, Penn. You can have your cognac.’

Penn opened his mouth to say something and fainted.

‘Damn him,’ said Barnes. ‘Why couldn’t he have done that five minutes ago?’

It was close to dusk and the tank was rumbling steadily forward when they first saw the farm, an isolated spot in the middle of nowhere. Would the inhabitants be friendly, Barnes wondered, and he prayed that they would be because the tank crew was near the end of its tether.

It had been eight o’clock in the evening before he had felt that Penn was fit enough to travel, as far as any man could be said to be fit to travel inside a tank two hours after a bullet had been removed from his shoulder. While Penn rested, Barnes and Reynolds had worked non-stop under the heat of the sun attending to the tank’s" maintenance. Their work completed, they had turned to the nightmare task of lowering and settling Penn inside the tank and as they wedged him in with several blankets he had protested.

‘You don’t have to make all this fuss. For your information I’m already feeling a lot better with that bullet outside me.’

‘Shut up^and try to get some rest,’ Barnes had told him. ‘You ought to be blind drunk now with the cognac you’ve consumed.’

‘When I was in London, Sergeant, the deb girls used to have some trouble getting me drunk.’

‘I thought it was supposed to be the other way round."

‘Then clearly you weren’t in demand like I was.’

Even this short exchange of banter seemed to exhaust Penn and he relapsed into silence as Barnes checked the firing mechanism and then climbed back into the turret. Giving the order to advance, he forced himself to stand erect as the tank left the building, proceeded down the track and turned on to the road to the west – the road to Cambrai, with Arras beyond.

An hour later Barnes was still in the turret and the tank was still rolling forward. To make sure Reynolds kept alert he spoke to him frequently over the intercom because by now even the driver was showing signs of strain and Barnes was hoping to God that they wouldn’t meet the enemy before nightfall. The unit was in no shape to fight a cat at the moment. They were approaching the top of a hill and he couldn’t yet see over the other side. Standing up on his toes, he waited for the moment when he could see what lay ahead. When they moved over the top he saw the farm.

It was standing by the roadside half a mile ahead. Focusing his glasses he saw a farmhouse, several outbuildings, a haystack close to the verge, and a man working in the fields. As they came closer he saw a woman leave the man to walk back to the farmhouse while nearby another man was driving across the fields on an orange tractor. From the farmhouse chimney a coil of smoke rose, climbing vertically into the evening sky as the sun neared the horizon, a blood-red disc which promised yet another glorious tomorrow. Would they be friendly? Was it possible that they could tell him of a place where the tank and its crew could spent the night out of sight? And, above all else, would they sell them some food? He doubted it. They were under partial German occupation and probably already they were learning to watch their step. ‘German occupation.’ The phrase ran through his mind and he thought of what Lebrun had said. ‘The Germans are in Abbeville…’ Lebrun must have lied about that: if it were true it could mean that the war was lost. Perhaps at least this farmer would be able to tell him about Abbeville. As they drew close to the farm the man left the field and stood waiting by the roadside, and as he watched him Barnes heard a familiar sound a long way off, no more than a distant mutter but he immediately identified the sound of heavy artillery firing. The guns of Arras? They were approaching the battle area. It was the evening of Friday May 24th.