Here Dead Lie

This is a short story I wrote after reading 'the Great War' by Les Carlyon. I was shocked and appalled by the utter disregard for human life and felt quite angry, so I suppose this was my response.

Barnard Astley woke fitfully from his hammock inside the gloom and dank of an underground cavern, buried in the grit of his own perspiration. The canvas sling swayed rhythmically with the abrupt struggle of his worn body, and for a long moment among the room's laughter and shouting, he thought he could hear men crying out and groaning around him.

The wide poise of the Englishman's eyes froze on the ceiling above, where the dull orange light of a nearby lamp flickered against the wooden framing. Shadows danced against the facade of the room, bounced about like the distinct forms of charging men across a war torn battlefield.

Barnard could almost hear the sounds of their crying voices, the death rattle and heavy crumps of the answering shell fire as the soldiers were suddenly torn asunder like clumps of dirt. In his mind, the thoughts of Passchendaele returned to him as easy as the heavy, forceful exhales of his breath, caught restless from the scene of dying men.

Insanity stood on the brink of consuming Barnard's frozen form, and he pleaded to God with wordless movements of his lips for help. The cries of charging and death milled with other noise, incomprehensible, until in his mind the sound fell away and out of existence into greyness, leaving only the laughter and shouting left over a table of cards.

Sluggishly, Barnard sat up on the edge of the hammock, and rubbed clammy hands over his eyes. A futile attempt to wipe the thoughts from memory. It took a long moment before he managed to gather himself, realising where he was - where he had been for twelve months - and he glanced steadily around the cavern's murky features.

Slipping lazily off the hammock, Barnard propped himself on his feet. He felt the rotten form of his boots underneath that had seldom been taken off in three weeks. Although it was barely cool outside, the young man of barely twenty three felt cold and gritty and he grabbed his khaki jacket lying at the foot of his bed. He threw it over his shoulders immediately.

There was an earthly aroma in the room as he turned to the three other men, staggering over to them silently like an unnoticed assassin in the dark. The cavern was lit up around them all by the dull, orange light of a single lantern, sitting in the centre of an improvised table of wood, nails and a box. Around the table, three of his good mates were arguing and bouncing about as they usually did over a game of cards. They seemed entirely unaware of his waking up as he came over to them. He settled his tin helmet on the table, and rubbed a muddy hand through his matted hair, sighing.

'Gee, you're sweatin' alright there, Astley.' Geeves said under him, looking up and hiding his pair of aces, two nines and a king under the palm of his hand. Paul Geeves had pale features and scraggy brown hair. He was the one in the group who never really thought before he spoke, but tended to surprise the four every now and then with his observations of life.

'Huh?' Barnard said, looking down at Geeves' dark eyes with a bewildered look. He put his hand to his forehead and felt the heavy band of sweat sitting on his face like a glimmering white cloth. Small dabbles of oily water lit the tips of his fingers, and he wiped his hands on his khaki jacket.

'Must be warm under all that clothing,' remarked Tellgan. 'And that jacket, it's quite humid outside.' Tellgan was in a greasy white cotton shirt and suspenders, and had apparently laid his jacket over the backrest of his chair. His black hair lay about his head in a messy tangle, and he was unshaven. Ben Tellgan was something of a thinker, always to have the last word in any argument or conversation. And then there was Will Tamson sitting sloppily beside him, who always liked to have a laugh but was in all a good bloke and friend.

'Must be coming down with something,' Barnard mumbled, looking down to study himself. 'I think I'll leave the jacket on.'

'Well, you might be right. Hodge come down with what's-he-call-it the other day. Took 'im to regiment aid station a few KAYs back, won't be returning for a week. In any case, suit yourself.'

Geeves looked back at his cards, and a slight grin flickered across his features for a brief instant. He leant back on the box under him, or at least tried to before realising it had no back.

'I'm all in,' he said a little too hurriedly, and pushed in a ten-pound note and half a pack of cigarettes.

'Hang on, Geeves.' Tamson interrupted. 'It's not even your turn yet and besides, ain't that your life savings you're putting on the line there?'

Barnard put his helmet back on and turned away for the door. 'Anyway, I'm off for a smoke outside.'

'Okay,' Tellgan said as he presented a royal flush much to the surprise of Geeves. 'Just keep yer head down alright, snipers been at our boys all day. The least we need is for you to come back with your head blown off.' Tamson and Geeves exchanged a few laughs.

'Alright,' Barnard mumbled with a barely perceptible nod. Tellgan looked up into Barnard's downcast eyes, and saw a look of carelessness. A glint of exhaustion.

'Hey, take it easy out there alright mate.'

Barnard managed a weak smile at Tellgan's suddenly sincere features and nodded, before turning away. He grabbed his Lee-Enfield from the rack by the door and waded out into the dried mud, immediately greeted by the incense of gunpowder residue and decomposing bodies of a world gone mad.

Despite the unusually stagnant weather, a light mist of rain brushed against Barnard's face from overhead leaden clouds. An ominous mist, matching the serenity of the still evening. He lit a cigarette and walked out of sight of the cavern, shouldering his rifle as he found his way further down the trench. The walls of the winding creek-like system stood on either side of him, seven feet deep of mud, chalk and filth unrecognisable from years of war. A few empty wooden boxes and spent rifle rounds were all that remained in this part of the trench. No one else was around. No other man to make their mark on the mud. Most of them had gone over a week ago, never to return.

Barnard took a final drag on his cigarette, before tossing it carelessly to the side. He turned around, only to face the upturned palm of a hand, protruding from the boarded wall of dirt and dry clay beside him. It was a grey limb hanging out like the claws of a branch, with its fingers lying side by side in an extended grasp, grabbing air and the elements, holding onto nothingness. He had past this same ghoulish figure for several weeks now, and somehow the thought never exactly clicked inside him that within the wall there lay a human being, a man created in the image of God, buried under several feet of slushing muck and earth.

Barnard hurriedly tried to walk away, when the point of a bone broke under him, poking out from the muddy puddle beneath. He stepped back in horror, and his eyes grew wide. He found himself thinking back to Passchendaele; the relentless groaning of falling shells, the cries and screams of dying men, the sight of all his men falling around him like dirt.

Barnard felt the deep wail climb from his throat, and he fell to his knees in the muddy water as his legs collapsed with little warning under him. His head drooped in his hands, the Englishman's chest heaved with uncontrollable torment, and his spectral groans were all that could be heard haunting the trench line.

Passchendaele.

 

* * *

 

The men are already falling beside Barnard as they clambered over the top of the trench wall, under the resounding screech of whistles and cries of rushing men. Soldiers are already falling against the wall of lead, and the body climbing up on the ladder over him suddenly froze and fell back, bringing Barnard to the ground.

Barnard dragged himself from underneath the squirming figure and propped himself on his knees. He looked at the man's features in horror. It was his brother.

Jeff was clutching at his throat with pale hands as blood spurted through the joins in his fingers. His body flopped ingloriously with torment, and legs kicked helplessly against the mud. There was nothing he could do for his brother, except to look on and stare in futility.

More men pushed passed the two, scuttling up the ladders over the trench wall, lunging forward willingly to their place in hell.

 

* * *

 

Barnard hid his bawling features in the warm folds of his arms, and he felt his eyes and nose running endlessly over the khaki sleeves of his jacket. To his right, the sudden squirming of boot steps through mud as two soldiers came down the trench together startled him. He quickly lowered his arms and pretended to tie his shoelaces, watching as a long translucent string of snot ran down from his nose, touching the mud under him like melted cheese. He kept his eyes to the ground as the two men push passed him, chatting loudly among themselves.

Barnard peered out from the corner of his eye as the soldiers turned down the corner of the trench and out of sight, and he slowly stood up from the ground, wiping mud and loose water from the folds in his pants. He doused the tears running down his cheeks with his sleeves, and his eyes stung as though a handful of dirt had been whipped into his face.

In the distance, over the wall of the trench before him, he could hear the thudding sounds of shells in the distance somewhere; a long string of concussive impacts over the Germans lines. A piercing flash of white from the sun stole through the grey carpet of cloud overhead, briefly greeting the world before hurrying away again at the sight of all that has been. A crow glided against the northern wind, and silently fell out of eyeshot.

What he would do to return home and begin living normal again. After all this though, how would he be able to live? How would he pick up the threads of a past life? It didn't matter anyway, to him at least. To be gone and away from all this madness was worth everything. But how would he return to his parents without his brother, knowing how to explain what happened?

A sudden boom grew close over the trench, sending repercussions through the earthwork. Wood framings boarded along the trench walls rattled and creaked with the jitter of the countryside, and loose dust and earth rushed down through the gaps like grain spilt from a basket. Barnard felt his whole body's frame shudder, although he would not move. Could not move. His mind jumped nervously to the familiar tremor, his wide eyes poised on the images tearing at his mind.

Overhead, a blink of light shafted over him with the sound of a rising whistle, growing louder and louder, and landed with a concussive impact on the field ahead in no man's land. Without any thought or control, Barnard discarded his rifle and fell to the ground and he gripped his features with the fleshy shield of his hands. He almost expected a salvo of shells to fall over them, but there was nothing. Only an all too consuming silence that was sometimes as unsettling as when the noise did lift up on them.

Barnard curled up into a ball and clenched his eyes shut, trying to force the fear gnawing at his mind away from him. He began to shift his thoughts to the familiar faces, those now empty stares of people; recollections of memory, of those he had once known back home. They were now a polaroid of hollow eyes and expressionless looks. The war and fighting had taken away what was once essence.

Where was the brother, the friend in this? Where were the men he talked to, laughed with, walked among? They were now ghosts over there on the field. Gone, like leaves falling from a tree. Barnard felt the hard, rhythmic throb inside him, like those distant thuds on the horizon. His heart was so heavy now, swollen, feeling like the wound from the thrust of a bayonet.

Barnard sat up against the trench wall, and gripping a small piece of card from his pocket, he stared deeply into the crumpled photo of his brother and him, taken two months before they departed for the Western Front one year ago. Their still, proud features, glazed in grey and white, stared blankly toward him. The only thing now in his possession he had to remind himself of his brother's cool, firm outlines.

An explosion rocked the top of the trench wall just above Barnard, and the world heaved to the side for a moment as clouds of dust and smoke fell over him. Barnard squeezed his eyes closed and buried his face in his arms, losing the photo in the mist and concussive impact of the blast.

After a moment, Barnard propped himself up on his feet and saw that he was covered in grey and white powder. His face was the only part of him untouched and still fleshy. He wiped himself down, and looked down at his hands only to notice that the photo was gone. He gasped and jumped to the ground, sifting through the dust and mud for the white square piece of silken card, even as men cried somewhere down the line behind him, expecting an attack to be launched by the Germans.

Barnard panicked when he could not see the photo anywhere, and he knew the only place it could have gone was over the trench wall above him. Propping his rifle against the wall, he walked over to the tumbled boxes of wood nearby, and began to stack them so that he could see over the trench. He began climbing the staircase of boxes, and gripping the mud of the world above, carefully revealed his pale white features for all the watching eyes in the world beyond to see.

The ravaged countryside sat lifelessly before him, and Barnard's eyes steadily gazed over the features of a world that were now so familiar and engrossing to him. Memories of England were all but forgotten. Craters sat lip to lip with one another in what were hundreds of thousands of pockmarks, seemingly bubbling from the mud-sodden earth.

Trees' broken and twisted stumps were all that remained of a once large forest that had stood against the Belgian countryside. In more than one place arose a body, or part of one, drowning in liquidised puddles of mud, carved in a place or two by wooden crossing boards. Elsewhere, the pallid grey of bones could be seen clinging loosely to khaki from battles fought over a year ago. But it was only three metres before him where his cared for possession lay, caught at the base of a blackened branch protruding from a rancid puddle of water.

Popping a quick glance around, Barnard ducked over the top of the trench and pushed his body into the mud to avoid the attention of watching eyes. Eyeing the photo, he began to crawl on his stomach, past the recently upturned crater to his left; dragging swollen knees through mud that seemed to stick to him with uncanny mercy. Faces contorted with deathless stares peered up from the ground around him where men had previously fallen before the rain had come, and buried them, and he stopped in his tracks. A wooden sign watched over them, tied roughly to a stump, and read -- "Here Dead Lie".

Barnard found his eyes caught in a trance by the eyes of faces lost in a moment in time, a time frozen before that last breath leaving their lungs was met by the unseen flash of the weapon that had ended their lives. After a long while, Barnard came back to his attention, rubbing a hand over his eyes to clear the images still left in the darkness, when there was a sudden spray of dust and mud not a metre before him. The resonance of a whizzing hiss of metal in the sky.

It was in that brief second that Barnard knew a sniper had spotted him, and he found himself hesitating as he approached the photo. He threatened to turn away and duck back into cover of the trenches, but he resisted the impulse. He whimpered even as he reached back for the photo with an outstretched arm. Nearly there! One more foot!

Barnard pushed himself an extra few inches through the mud, and he strained forward as his dirtied fingers made out the edge of the white outlines of the photo. He gripped the card wholly in his hand and brought it close to him, sighing deeply with relief.

Barnard rolled back a moment, unmindful of the sniper when there was an abrupt jerk of his boot behind him. Barnard turned around to see Ben Tellgan hanging over the top of the trench and gripping his foot with his hands, the newly-lit cigarette hanging from the moist of his lower lip. The ghostly features of his face were seized with terror as he struggled to drag Barnard back into the safety of the trench.

'For f**k's sake, Astley! Get back in here! What ar---'

There was a second, more sudden crack in the air and a gat of blood popped from Tellgan's left eye. His head snapped back from the impact of the bullet, followed by the fizzling pocket of blood. His body rolled back lifelessly into the trench behind him and Barnard cried in horror, jumping to his knees, and clambering back into the trench. He fell face first into the trench and landed over Tellgan's motionless form. The numb mask of his face stared solemnly in the direction of Geeves and Tamson as they came racing down the trench, their faces aghast with grief at the sight of him.

Barnard stepped back in horror as Will and Paul landed over their friend, yelling and crying at him, shaking his limp body. Barnard's eyes were frozen sockets of dread, and he felt the rough form of earth on his back as he stepped back into the trench wall, beside the staircase of boxes. Barnard looked down at the muddy palms of his hands to see a missing photo.

Slowly, cautiously, he stumbled back up the boxes again like a possessed rag doll, not sure whether he should care if the next bullet should find him, and he peered over the earthen wall. There, before him, the rectangular shape of the photo remained a little over a metre away, under the watchful gaze of a wooden sign -- "Here Dead Lie".