Pro Rege Nostro

One British soldiers experience on the Western Front, and the affects it has on his future.

 

Henry Avery would never have smoked back home, but after two years in this place, it was one of the few things keeping his mind together. Henry is a shorter man, with dark eyes and hair, a square jaw and broad shoulders. His brown eyes were speckled with gold and still burnt with the fires of youth, but they were quickly dying out at the age 22. Beneath his long nose was a neatly trimmed mustache, but on this morning a shadowing of stubble was on his face. Now he sat on the fire-step, looking around the mud and filth filled grave they called their trench, rolling a cigarette. His trembling hand peppered the last bit of his tobacco ration onto a rolling paper, his mouth watered and the thought of the pleasure he was about to enjoy. Rolling it he looks at the other Gentlemen in Khaki that were beginning to stir about the trench. There was Sgt. Frank Travers, using his bayonet to scrape mud from the soles of his shoes, looking weary and uninterested. Further down the step was a boy named Johnson, curled up under a shelter half with his Lewis Gun, trying to get some more sleep before he had to go off to his detail. His partner Clyde Owens smoked a pipe and loading the steel drum with fresh fodder for the gun. An Irishmen by the name of O'Connor was whistling "The Dawning of the Day" while manning a boiler, making what was supposed to be coffee, it never tasted or even looked like coffee, but it was nothing then a bitter, dark, toxic fluid that would have you at the latrines for the whole morning. It had been an hour since they were ordered to "Stand to", a futile exercise where every man was roused by from much loved and much treasured sleep to fix bayonets to their rifles and be prepared to repel a dawn raid by the Huns. It never happened, or at least here it didn't, the Hun was doing the same damn thing 200 yards away; standing on their fire-step waiting for an Allied raid that wasn't coming. Henry put the cigarette into his mouth and began to pat around his mud-caked, lice-infested excuse of a uniform for matches. If his fiancée Margaret or his Mother could see him now, they would be mortified. Margaret Lawrence-Hayes was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen; he met her at a Christmas party in 1912. The light playing off her pearl earrings, her white dress seemed to be made of clouds as she moved from one group to the next, laughing, conversing, smiling, her blue eyes sparkling and dancing; she looked like an angel. He remembered acting shy when he first met her, he had no idea how to approach a women of Margaret's caliber. It took him several minutes to get up the courage to ask her to dance, he stumbled through both the question and the first dance, he must have seemed like an imbecile. She must have found his awkward, bumbling charm endearing, and on April 12, 1914 they were engaged, but by summer of the same year Henry was in battlefields of France. Avery remembered the day he told Margaret he had enlisted to fight for his King and his country. He had been through many ghastly and disturbing events in the course of the war, but none compare to the pain and worry he saw in her eyes. He was shook from his day dreaming by an artillery shell exploding a few yards in front of the trench. Dirt, mud, rocks, fragments of men and metal and Lord knows what else was thrown into the air, and rained down as if the sky and earth had traded places and it was trying to right itself. The pebbles and dirt clods bounced of his helmet, making light clinking sounds, like coins falling on flag stone. Henry used to cower from this terrors from heaven, but he had grown accustom the constant shelling. He stood up and picked up his rifle, slinging it over his back.

 

"Oi! Boyd! Have any matches?" Henry called down the trench to where a man was making his way through the stagnant mire that served as the trench floor. Joseph Boyd was a few years older than Henry, with a slim face and a keen wit. Boyd was a tall, lanky man with large hands and seemingly narrow shoulders, giving him a gawky, awkward appearance when he walked or ran. The two of them had become mates when they were training Aldershot and had been through it all together. Mons, homesickness, Neuve Chapelle, dysentery, fear, rats, First Ypres, lice, mud, Second Ypres, gas, death, and now a muddy strip near the River Somme, which according to the King holds the key to the whole war.

 

"Last of them, but here you go mate." Boyd pulled out a small, battered cardboard box. Henry takes out a match and strikes it against the side of the box and lights the cigarette. He drew a long, deep drag off the cigarette, feeling the calming effect spread out from his lungs. Boyd settled on the fire-step and leaned back against the planks keeping the walls up, his eyes fixed on a German helmet and the owners skull that must have been thrown into the trench during the last artillery bombardment. The helmets gray-green finish had finished, replaced by a dull red. The smooth surface was now pitted and dented. It had come to rest in the mud, facing the pair of them, the flesh nearly completely gone, a grisly smile on his face. His eyes were empty pits, filled with mud, his nose was filled in the same fashion, a gold tooth shone through the muck on the right side of the lower jaw. After taking another joyous deep drag of the tobacco, he handed it off to Boyd who snatched it like a gluttonous child would sweets. Henry squished through the bog over to where the skull was, knelt down and picked it up. He'd see corpses swallowed by No Man's Land but he'd never touched one. The helmeted skull was heavier than he had anticipated. Made heavier by a fresh, twisted piece of steel that still steamed as protruded from the back of the helmet.

 

"Avery! Put that down!" A booming voice was heard his left, it was Captain Douglas Tuttle. A stout man with a thick neck and tidy gray mustache. He had been in South Africa a decade before, and had left his left ring finger and part of his left middle finger there. Tuttle was a man of a stern disposition and he possessed a pair of piercing gray-blue eyes. He never smiled. Henry dropped the head and snapped to attention, as all who heard Tuttle's voice. O'Connor stood up quickly, knocking over the 'coffee' onto his feet, causing him to curse and dance about to avoid the scalding liquid. Tuttle made his way up to where Avery had been examining the skull, and moved past him towards battalion command.

 

"Be a good chap and get that out of my trench, there's a good lad." Tuttle said flatly, looking at the Stahlenhelm-clad skull face down in the mud as he passed. Tuttle stalked down the trench, past Boyd, past O'Connor, past Sgt. Travers and past Johnson who was still asleep. Henry mumbled something along the lines of 'yes sir' and stared at the skull again. He tosses it over the side of the trench, it was not callous or spiteful, he was just following orders, but in the back of his mind he was trying to shake the thought that it was a man's head. A head of a father or son, a brother or a sweetheart. What if he ended up like that? Would Margaret or his parents ever know what happened? Would he be listed as killed or simply missing? Would he be forgotten by his family and friends? Would anyone come looking for his earthly remains or just leave him in his crater grave? He contemplated all this when he heard the skull hit the mud, right after that the guns woke from their slumber. Tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, the rhythmic melody of the machine guns was only punctuated by the occasional shell strike. Most men kept their heads down, the bullets flicked mud and splinters of wood at them, but soon the thunder died down. Hours passed with little action, and Henry's mind returned to the skull. He began to think on the man who it belonged to, about his character. He began to wonder if he had been a church-going man. He began to wonder if he'd had a "Margaret" of his own. He began to wonder if even right now she was waiting by a post box for news from the front. He began to wonder if she was kept up at night by worries and doubts or if she had already found a new soldier. Lunch came and went and the boredom was palpable. Johnson and Clyde Owens were playing chess. Some pieces were missing, so they used .303 casings as substitutes. Boyd was continuing his project of turning a brass artillery shell casing into a vase. He planned on giving this current project to his parents upon his triumphant return. Tuttle came up and ordered the men to their feet.

 

"Alright Gentlemen, We are going to go over the top tonight, at dusk, so get some rest and some food. Make sure all your weapons are clean and that you have all the ammunition you need. That is all." Tuttle said sternly, looking over the dirty, wretched souls before him, "I know you will all perform admirably." Henry's stomach dropped out, he had been over the top many times, but the Somme was the place where many men didn't return. He wondered if the skull felt this fear before going over for the last time. If his hands shook, too, if his brow glistened with sweat as his did now. The hours until sunset passed slowly, He wrote a letter to his parents and another, more private one to his beloved Margaret. He told her of his fear, of the skull, of his hopes of the war ending soon, of his hopes of seeing her soon. He had just finished his letter and was about to seal it when another shell struck, this time much closer to the trench. Avery was thrown from his seat across the trench, bashing against the far wall. He was thrown like a toy flung by an fuming child who had grown tired of the plaything. The wind had been forced from his lungs and his ears rang. He looked around through the dust, he could hear shouts of men about him, but they seemed far away. As he regained his bearings, he looked over and saw Johnson. The boy was hurt, impaled through the shoulder by a fragment of wood plank they used to keep the dirt wall from collapsing. Red pooling on the russet soil. Clyde Owens grabbed the sobbing, terrified young gunner up in his arms and proceeded quickly down the trench, yelling for a stretcher bearer.

 

"Don't look now, but you have a visitor." Boyd said while dusting himself off, vainly trying to get all the dirt and mud off his uniform; only to work the filth into the fabric. A wry smile creped across his face as he pointed to the top of the trench. Avery looked up, to see the same smiling face in the rusted helmet looking down on him. Boyd moved town the trench, stumbling over the wood and mud, trying to find Sgt. Travers. Avery looked up at the skull from the fire-step.

 

"I don't think we have exchanged pleasantries, I'm Henry. And you are? Oh right, you're a Jerry, what's German for what's your name?" Henry chuckled to himself-- he must look insane. "Wie heisst du? Woe heisst zie? Oh forget it." Henry glared at the skull and pitched it back out into No Man's Land once more. Looking down the trench and saw Travers and Boyd and a few others coming back with some corrugated sheet metal and wooden planks. He unhooked his entrenching tool form his webbing equipment and helped the men repair the trench. It was good to have some activity. It kept his mind off Margaret, the skull, Johnson, the 200 yards of death, everything. Work was good, it broke up the boredom and provided a change from the work of killing men. During the course of the repair work, the men shed their web equipment, weapons, helmets and jackets. Down to their gray wool flannel shirts they filled new sandbags, joked and nailed up fresh boards. Henry enjoyed working with his hands and had always been good at it. The wood was rough giving its handler the occasional splinter, it was a nice difference to the smooth wood of a rifle stock. A group of Highlanders came up the trench to relieve the men who were to be going over the top that nights, their colorful tartan kilts hidden beneath khaki covers, their Tam o'Shanters and Glengarry caps replaced with the dullish green of the metal helmet. Avery quickly put on his coat, buttoning it half way up before snatching the rest of his gear up to avoid being left by the others.

 

Henry slept, like all the others, where he could in the support trench, the floor wasn't mud like in the fire trench. His dreams were filled with swirling images home, of his parents, of his Father and Mother. His father, Robert Avery V.C. had always been a severe man who measured himself by the years spend in His Majesty's service. A great few things in life brought him joy and one of his main vexes was Henry. Henry was his only son of five children, and Robert long felt the boy to be soft, not possessing the attributes necessary for being a proper man. He had been surprised when Henry and Margaret announced their engagement, thinking Henry would be a bachelor all his life. His memory brought forth a room, an old corner store off the square; Henry was stripped down do nearly nothing with a handful of other recruits while a Sergeant and a Lance Corporal proceeded to gather their information; height, weight, age, place of birth, address, current employment, and so on. A doctor then next went down the line checking for physical ailments. They checked his eyes, teeth, tongue, lungs, arms and legs. Henry felt like a horse being inspected before auction. Henry feared that they were going to write down his height in hands, not in inches. After he was finished he grabbed his clothes and dressed quickly and left the room. He saw his father and a group of other men of the same age. His father was smoking a cigar and smiling, slapping backs and shaking hands; proud of his son for the first time in his life. The light from the large plate glass window was dancing and glittering off his Sudan War medal, his Queen's South Africa medal and the Victoria Cross. He glare from the polished metal obscured the words on the South Africa medal, but he knew them: Talana, Diamond Hill, Relief of Kimberly and Modder River. Next his dreams shifted to Margaret. How she looked standing in the tall grass, her brown hair about her shoulders; the breeze catching locks of it, lifting them slightly. Her straw sun bonnet, trimmed with blue ribbon was in her hand, fresh flowers in the other. She stood in the field, looking up at the blue sky, swallows flitting about in the summer air. She turned and smiled at him.

 

"Henry, it's time. Come on," she said, but something about it didn't seem right. Suddenly he was shaken awake by Sergeant Travers. "Come on boyo, get up. Let's go, we've got a job to do." Avery grabbed Travers's offered hand and the Sergeant helped him to his feet. They made their way back down towards the front. As they passed a dug-out that served as the mail collection site, Henry took out his letters and handed them to a weary looking Corporal who was manning the post. After a few more, seemingly eternal minutes Avery found himself with the others standing in front of the ladders to No Man's Land.

 

"Fix! Bayonets!" Tuttle shouted from his crouched position atop the ladder. He put a silver whistle between his teeth after he finished giving his commands. As the men did so, Tuttle drew his pistol; It was C-96 Mauser with worn bluing and replacement grips made from Gazelle antler. The pistol was the subject of many stories. Some said he took it from a German officer at Mons or some other engagement or that he'd taken it from one of Koos de la Rey's commandos during the Boer War. The truth was it had been bought by Tuttle in a firearms shop in Birmingham before he went off to South Africa, and he had the grips made there; No commandos nor dead Germans. Tuttle looked at his watch, and they waited. O'Connor had his rosary in his hands, the finish of the wooden beads had long since been worn off by the sweat and piety of the man who owned them. Boyd was staring out towards No Man's Land, Owens stood next to him with the Lewis gun in hand. The seconds passed as they were days as the man waited, then the piercing cry of the whistle sounded. The men surged forward, scrambling over the top of the trench as a swarm of khaki ants. Henry ran thinking constantly: 50 yards to the wire, 30 yards to the first crater, 15 yards to the next. Please Lord, hear me now, please don't let them use gas. The German machine guns opened fire as he passed the barbed wire; the bullets sizzled through the air like angry lead wasps. The rhythmic barking of the machine guns was fearsome; but Avery felt the dull thump of mortars firing as he charged his way across the pock-marked landscape. Men were falling all around him. He saw Boyd and Clyde stop in a deep crater and begin to fire back with the Lewis Gun. The quick bursts, sounding quite weak compared to the sustained fire of the German machine guns. Henry had just scrambled over a felled, gnarled tree when he was tossed through the heavens by another explosion. He landed in a large, deep crater, with water and mud and remains of man and materiel in the bottom. Henry noticed, while airborne, that his rifle would land just outside the crater; then he slammed into the side of it. The wind left him and he felt his arm shatter. He slid down the muddy bank, face twisted in pain, as he cradled his broken arm. He looked around the pit, and his eyes fall on a familiar face. It was the Stahlhelmed Skull.

 

"You again! I thought I made it clear, I don't want you around," Henry hissed at the skull as it grinned down at him. "So don't take this the wrong way, mate, but piss off, will ya?" The skull's grin didn't fade, it seemed to get wider. It as if it was laughing at him, as if Henry's predicament amused him. As the hours passed, Henry began to lash out at this voyeur, hurling insults at the skull. With the changing shadows as the sun went down, he skull seemed to become upset with Henry's insults; scowling down on him, almost pouting.

 

This made Henry feel guilty, he should respect his fallen foe. "Hey, I am...I'm sorry. I didn't mean what I said earlier, Hans, I am sorry, mate." It was dark now, the cloudless sky was now flecked with stars. It was quite beautiful, he wondered if Margaret was gazing upon the same sky. "Did you have a girl back home, Hans? I bet you did. No need to be modest, I bet you were quite the ladies man. I got a girl. Margaret. This is her." With his still usable arm he pulled out a small picture from inside his jacket, helded it up towards crater edge. As he did so the deep blue flecked with silver was torn by a streak of red, arcing high over the field, casting it in a eerie light. Shadows shifting and swaying, forming monsters and demons, then fading away again. The red flare was followed by a green, then white, then yellow, then another red. The skull's facial expressions shifted and changed with each color; envy, happiness, annoyance, fear. All these expressions seemed to mimic the conversation Henry was conducting one-sidedly down at the bottom of his grubby hole. Henry made a few vain attempts to climb out to see what was going on or to retrieve his rifle, but each time the German machine gunners and snipers would toy with him, shooting near him. Treating him as the cornered prey, with predators circling round.

 

At some point Henry fell asleep. He woke early, he heard the distant orders to 'Stand' To on either side of him. He inched back towards the top of the hole, took his handkerchief out and waved it wildly. He knew the Germans were 'Standing To' as well, or so he thought, but a bullet tore the handkerchief from his hand. Sliding back down the muck towards the bottom he rolled over onto his back, looking up at the sky, and let out a pessimistic sigh. He lay there, watching the night fade away and morning come on, from blue to purple, and from purple to orange and red. He knew exactly what was going on 115 yards behind him, in the safety of the trench. O'Connor was making his 'Coffee'; Sgt. Travers was barking orders about, like a bulldog with a bushy mustache. Boyd would be playing chess with Clyde Owens. Tuttle would mark the name 'Avery, Henry R.' missing after his roll call. And in a few weeks a telegram would be handed to his father saying he was missing, his Mother and sisters would weep, his father would remain unmoved and simply carry on, stiff upper lip. For King and Country he'd say, the boy was just doing his duty he'd say. Morning as usual.

Henry escaped from what he resigned to be his grave after three days with Hans. His arm would never be the same; the nerves were damaged. It left him with only limited use of his right hand. He was marked invalid and returned home. His father greeted him with a smile and a speech about King and Duty, but both quickly faded as he saw Henry's arm. He began to treat Henry as damaged; he looked down on Henry, as if one's arm wasn't service enough to his King. Henry felt ashamed. He was promoted to Sergeant and served the rest of his career in the very recruiting office he had been in years before. It was his job to send other young, wide-eyed boys off to die in Flanders until November 11, 1918. Henry received his discharge papers on January 9th, 1919, a week before his regiment returned home. He greeted them happily expecting to see them all; to see friendly smiling faces and to hear jovial laughs of the triumphant conquerors, but this was not to be. Sgt. Travers came home blinded by gas. Clyde Owens was a broken man who returning home only to drink his pension away before hanging himself in a Cheapside slum in '21. Johnson never returned home; he died of infection from his injuries. O'Connor returned to Ireland, got married and emigrated to Chicago. Boyd returned a changed man, his personality had shifted. they called it Shell Shock. His normal jovial humor was still there, but twisted darkly by the war. There were rare instances when the Old Boyd would appear, like at Henry and Margaret's wedding or the christening of their first child and Boyd's own godson, a boy named Joseph Boyd Avery. Over the years Boyd drifted further and further away from Henry, eventually trying his hand at logging in Canada. No letters came after the first one saying he'd settling in Alberta. Boyd just mounted his horse one day and rode onto the prairie, and it swallowed him, never to be seen again.

Henry got a job as a postman in 1922 the same year his daughter was born, a bright eyed child named Katherine, whom he affectionately called Kat. Henry's children often asked him questions as children do: Papa, what happened to your arm? Papa, where were you in France? Papa, were you in the War? Papa, what does the red flower mean? Papa what's this medal for, are you a hero like Grandpa? Margaret would always shoo them off before Henry would respond. On 11 November, 1926, Henry put on his finest suit and pinned on medals he left in his sock drawer the rest of the year. They were Allied War Medal, 1914 Star and the King's Victory Medal. He hated them, he didn't have the same sense of pride his father took in his. He marched in the Parade and laid a wreath on the memorial to the dead, stern-faced and somber, red poppy in his lapel. After the parade the survivors gathered at the pub and drank until they couldn't drink anymore, this was the one time of year Henry did this. Henry staggered home around midnight, Margaret was waiting for him. She was in her night gown with a shawl around her shoulders, a worried look on her face. She asked him if he was alright, he slurred 'no'. She asked him what he meant, he said 'France', she asked him again. Henry, too drunk to stop himself told her everything. He told her of the charge, the nights and days in the crater talking to the disembodied head of his enemy for company. He told her of the mortar bombardment on the third day, of the dizziness, of the infection, of running across No Man's Land towards what he hoped was his trench. He told her of no one recognizing him after he toppled into the trench; he had been so covered with filth, of the months spent in Paris recovering. He told her of his depression, his shame and of his father's distain of him. He had set out to be a hero and returned much less. He looked up as his wife, her look; a mixture of pity and disgust. He never spoke of it again.

Reviews

[Dennis Shanaberg]

First, I have to critique a couple things.
I would suggest a quick reread and edit if possible. There were quite a few grammar issues and awkward sentences that simply took the reader out of the story. Also, I would check for tense shifts. They were fairly prevalent throughout the write.
The other thing which is somewhat of a veiled compliment is that you began with all of this awesome detail from that time. You included terms and phrases that might have been used at the time. I was very impressed by that. The problem lies in the fact that as the story continues, it seems like you forgot about those or simply abandoned them. The authenticity that the story opens with quickly fades.
Likewise, the detail at the beginning of the story is fantastic, but that too fades during the telling of the story. The entire segment postwar seems entirely rushed, and it was troubling because this is a fantastic story that is being told.
Now, if you couldn't tell, I really enjoyed the beginning. The skull was a brilliant piece of imagery that was used to great effect.
I feel like a slight bit of editing and maybe a bit more attentiveness and this can be a work for the ages. You have a singular flair for detail here that rivals some of the greats. It is a long piece and it's easy to lose your edge as you continue, but I have a ton of faith in this story.
Overall, a great job. keep it up.

[Jooolie]

This was really good :) A couple of things I noticed though:

There are a few places where you switch tenses and I noticed a few times, you may have forgotten "a" or "the" in front of a word, so the sentence sounds a bit awkward.

The sentence "The helmets gray-green finish had finished," is a bit strange to read with the word "finish" in there twice. Maybe consider rewriting that bit.

" The boy was hurt, impaled through the shoulder by a fragment of wood plank they used to keep the dirt wall from collapsing. Red pooling on the russet soil." I'm not entirely sure why the second part was there, but it seemed kind of awkwardly placed in there :/

Sidenote, for some reason, I really liked the image of O'Connor with the rosary beads. It was cool. Just thought I'd say :P

Besides those few small things, this was great! The ending was really well done and the whole thing had really good details. The characters were all very intricate and you did great in describing each of them. The whole story was really well done and I could pretty much see every bit of it in my head. Kudos :)

[Chamil3001]

good

[Havatara]

I liked the entire thing. The ending surprised me and I think you should shorten or separate the longer paragraphs into parts, but the plot and characters were both great.

[AJChallenger]

The first paragraph bored the hell out of me and, to be honest, I went no further. Start somewhere with action, something to keep the reader's attention. I'm payed to do this kind of stuff and if I had trouble getting through it people who read for pleasure will certainly put it down.

**NOTE. My policy on reviews has changed. I will be happy to review on or two pieces of work, but will do no more without compensation. People are payed to do this kind of thing, don't think you'll get free editing from me.

[Senseless whatever]

Very good write. Giving perspective from an individual about the war not as easy as many think.

[Cherrie Palmer]

this is a strong story but it could be better if you could do less telling and more showing. That aside I liked it. Cherrie

[Ruth]

I have a strong interest in World War 1, this has grabbed my attention hon and moved me!
Atmospheric and beautifully written!
xx

[Undying Glory]

man this is really good. really. i mean, i know world war 1, Ypres, the Somme, the Marne and all, but you've really added a whole new dimension to World War 1 and the entire atmosphere of the war. awesome work