Michael Morpurgo - Morpurgo War Stories

“Stay close, Tommo,” Charlie whispers, and then we are climbing out over the top, crawling on our bellies through the wire. We snake our way forward. We slither into a shell hole and lie doggo there for a while in case we’ve been heard. We can hear Fritz talking now, and laughing. There’s the sound of a gramophone playing — I’ve heard all this before on lookout, but distantly. We’re close now, very close, and I should be scared witless. Strangely, I find I’m not so much frightened as excited. Maybe it’s the rum. I’m out poaching again, that’s what it feels like. I’m tensed for danger. I’m ready for it, but not frightened.

It takes an eternity to cross no–man’s–land. I begin to wonder if we’ll ever find their trenches at all. Then we see their wire up ahead. We wriggle through a gap, and still undetected we drop down into their trench. It looks deserted, but we know it can’t be. We can still hear the voices and the music. I notice the trench is much deeper than ours, wider too and altogether more solidly constructed. I grip my rifle tighter and follow Charlie along the trench, bent double like everyone else. We’re trying not to, but we’re making too much noise. I can’t understand why no one has heard us. Where are their sentries, for God’s sake? Up ahead I can see Wilkie waving us on with his revolver. There is a flickering of light now coming from a dugout ahead, where the voices are, where the music is. From the sound of it there could be half a dozen men in there at least. We only need one prisoner. How are we going to manage half a dozen of them?

At that moment the light floods into the trench as the dugout curtain opens. A soldier comes out shrugging on his coat, the curtain closing behind him. He is alone, just what we are after. He doesn’t seem to see us right away. Then he does. For a split second the Hun does nothing and neither do we. We just stand and look at one another. He could so easily have done what he should have done, just put up his hands and come with us. Instead he lets out a shriek and turns, blundering through the curtain back into the dugout. I don’t know who threw the grenade in after him, but there is a blast that throws me back against the trench wall. I sit there stunned. There is screaming and firing from inside the dugout, then silence. The music has stopped.

By the time I get in there Little Les is lying on his side shot through the head, his eyes staring at me. He looks so surprised. Several Germans are sprawled across their dugout, all still, all dead — except one. He stands there naked, blood spattered and shaking. I too am shaking. He has his hands in the air and is whimpering. Wilkie throws a coat over him and Pete bundles him out of the dugout. Frantic now to get back we scrabble our way up out of the trench, the Hun still whimpering. He is beside himself with terror. Pete is shouting at him to stop, but he’s only making it worse. We follow the captain through the German wire and run.

For a while I think we have got away with it, but then a flare goes up and we are caught suddenly in broad daylight. I hurl myself to the ground and bury my face in the snow. Their flares last so much longer than ours, shine so much brighter. I know we’re for it. I press myself into the ground, eyes closed, I’m praying and thinking of Molly. If I’m going to die I want her to be my last thought. But she’s not. Instead I’m saying sorry to Father for what I did, that I didn’t mean to do it. A machine gun opens up behind us and then rifles fire. There is nowhere to hide, so we pretend to be dead. We wait till the light dies and the night is suddenly black again. Wilkie gets us to our feet and we go on, running, stumbling, until more lights go up, and the machine gunners start up again. We dive into a crater and roll down crashing through the ice into the watery bottom. Then the shelling starts. It seems as if we have woken up the entire German army. I cower in the stinking water with the German and Charlie, the three of us clinging together, heads buried in one another as the shells fall all about us. Our own guns are answering now but it is little comfort to us. Charlie and I drag the Hun prisoner out of the water. Either he is talking to himself or he’s saying a prayer, it’s difficult to tell.

Then we see Wilkie lying higher up the slope, too close to the lip of the crater. When Charlie calls out to him he doesn’t reply. Charlie goes to him and turns him over. “It’s my legs,” I hear the captain whisper. “I can’t seem to move my legs.” He’s too exposed up there, so Charlie drags him back down as gently as he can. We try to make him comfortable. The Hun keeps praying out loud. I’m quite sure he’s praying now. “Du lieber Gott ,” I hear. They call God by the same name. Pete and Nipper are crawling over towards us from the far side of the crater. We are together at least. The ground shudders, and with every impact we are bombarded by showers of mud and stone and snow. But the sound I hate and fear most is not the sound of the explosion — by then it’s done and over with, and you’re either dead or not. No, it’s the whistle and whine and shriek of the shells as they come over. It’s the not knowing where they will land, whether this one is for you.

Then, as suddenly as the barrage begins, it stops. There is silence. Darkness hides us again. Smoke drifts over us and down into our hole, filling our nostrils with the stench of cordite. We stifle our coughing. The Hun has stopped his praying, and is lying curled up in his overcoat, his hands over his ears. He’s rocking like a child, like Big Joe.

“I won’t make it,” Wilkie says to Charlie. “I’m leaving it to you to get them all back, Peaceful, and the prisoner. Go on now.”

“No sir,” Charlie replies. “If one goes we all go. Isn’t that right, lads?”

That’s how it happened. Under cover of an early-morning mist we made it back to our trenches, Charlie carrying Wilkie on his back the whole way, until the stretcher bearers came for him in the trench. As they lifted him, Wilkie caught Charlie by the hand and held it. “Come and see me in hospital, Peaceful,” he said. “That’s an order.” And Charlie promised he would.

We had a brew up with our prisoner in the dugout before they came for him. He smoked a cigarette Pete had given him. He’d stopped shaking now, but his eyes still held their fear. We had nothing to say to one another until the moment he got up to leave. “Danke,” he said. “Danke sehr.”

“Funny that,” Nipper said when he’d gone. “Seeing him standing there with not a stitch on. Take off our uniforms and you can hardly tell the difference, can you? Not a bad bloke, for a Fritz that is.”

That night I didn’t think, as I should have done, of Little Les lying out there in the German dugout, with a hole in his head. I thought of the Hun prisoner we’d brought back. I didn’t even know his name, yet, after that night cowering in the shell hole with him, I felt somehow I knew him better than I’d ever known Little Les.

We are back at last at rest camp, most of us anyway. We soon find out which hospital Wilkie is in, and we go to see him as Charlie had promised. It’s a big chateau of a place, with ambulances coming and going, and crisp-looking nurses bustling everywhere. “Who are you?” asks the orderly at the desk.

“Peaceful,” says Charlie smiling — he loves playing this joke. “Both of us are Peaceful.”

The orderly does not look amused, but he seems to have been expecting us. “Which of you is Charlie Peaceful?”

“I am,” says Charlie.

“Captain Wilkes said you would come.” The orderly is reaching into the desk drawer. He takes out a watch. “He left this for you,” he says, and Charlie takes the watch.