Execution

Even the Hun didn’t shoot their own men. At least that’s what Private Miller had been told. He took a breath and tried to stand up straight, the stench of the trenches mingling with a clear Westerly breeze that promised Spring. Somewhere miles behind the ruined farmhouse the German artillery pieces were warming up their barrels with a morning volley. The sky rumbled low and some crows, fat on human flesh, squawked and took to the sky.

Watery grey light seeped under Miller’s blindfold. Wrists bound behind his back, the coarse twine itched and burned on his skin. He shivered from both the chill morning and the nervous strain of his muscles.

How long had he been waiting now?

Five minutes?

Ten?

The bastards were toying with him, waiting for the local mayor, the priest and the family to make their way across the crippled landscape to see justice be served.

That stupid Flanders tart should have just handed him the plonk when he asked. There she was, singing away in them foreign songs pretending she didn’t understand a customer wanted some pissing bastard booze. So, he asked again. Hand over the fucking plonk missy. She hadn’t and he had paid her with his bayonet and a bit more besides once the shit house they called a pub had closed. It had been dark but Jenkins had seen him, seen the blood on his blade and told the Company Sergeant Major. And then all within a week the trial had been held and that old duffer Colonel Templeton had sentenced him to death by firing squad.

And now the witnesses to the execution were coming.

Bastards.

Well, may as well go out cursing. It was either that or start gibbering, and so he hurled insults at those who were lined up ready to shoot, at the stuck-up Officers, at the family, be they present or not. He wished he knew some foreign swear words to make them choke.

Footsteps approached, squelching the mud. Padre Reynolds coming to plead him to accept the last rites.

“Fuck off priest! And you, you fucking merde eating monkeys! I’m not sorry! Fucking bitch deserved it!”

Detail! Detail, ‘shun! The Regimental Sergeant Major’s voice was coarse and confident, half a dozen feet slapping into the mud at his behest. Fat bastard, thought Miller. “You’re a fat bastard, Blake!” He laughed a high-pitched wheeze. “Everyone knows it!”

“With a magazine containing one round, load!” Came the command.

“Fuck off Blake!”

A low voice now, requesting permission to carry out the execution of Private Miller. Blake again, lolling his tongue around the Colonel’s ear.

Another volley of artillery, somewhere to the south, the shells splintering somewhere amongst some poor bastards huddled in their trenches, the missiles reaching their targets before the sound of the shot.

Give it a minute and our morning recital will start too, Miller thought.

Make ready!

Here we go, here we go, here we go, just like at the footy.

Miller felt the hot air of hell, the irresistible force pushing him back and then the cold, slimy mud caking his face. His hands were loose as he gasped for breath, his fingers in his mouth pulling out gobs of mud, then to his eyes, taking away the blindfold and the line of execution was nothing but a set of bloody rags, Blake staggering around, Templeton nowhere to be seen.

The Devil intervened…

Miller groped his way to his feet and staggered towards the trenches.

Follow the Devil’s voice. Follow the guns.

And he pushed his way against others who were running to help the execution party. The Hun don’t execute their own, everyone knows that. Everyone. So Christ knows I’ll take my chances in their unform over staying here!

Miller stamped across the slick planks and found a ladder, climbing over the top and picking his way through the barbed wire. He heard rasping laughter in his ears, the sound muffled against the ringing pitch. But still he slid on, waving a dirty, bloody rag in surrender, the lining of his pocket torn out and dangled above his head.

A bullet cracked like a whip as it passed inches from his head. Miller ducked and looked behind. There was Blake, a couple of others with him, crawling and crouching and picking their way through the mud and slime.

Mist clung low to the ground, settled in layers, running like smoky rivers through the low undulations. Another round cracked past causing Miller to turn and try and spy his pursuers. His boot caught on some wire and he stumbled, his next step plunging into the rotting ribcage of a still-saddled horse. This foot twisted and pulled against the bones, coming free as he fell forwards into a cavernous hole. Forwards he slid, hands pushing back but the ground giving way, through the low-settled mists, dredging cloth-clad bones that eased out the slickness.

And then water; water that stank with gore and putrid flesh, brown with mud and blood, a tureen of oily human soup hidden from the heavens by the fallen clouds. Miller spat and squirmed as he turned sideways on to the water’s edge.

Silent.

Panting and footsteps sounded above him so he buried his face in the cold ground, half his body in the water.

Bloody, bastard Blake. You’ll not ‘ave me! You’ll not fuckin’ ‘ave me!

Whispers. The footsteps moving away.

Miller glanced about the crater. The thick water, still as a held breath, offered floating votives of splintered wood and bloated bodies in shell-torn rags. Somewhere a horse whinnied and Miller scrambled his remaining self out of the water, his hands like claws in the mud.

Still again: only his eyes offering movement.

I’m here. I’m here and they don’t know where I am. Just wait it out and soon I’ll be over there with the Hun and the fraulines.

In the distance the crump of guns sounded, then the continuous sharp shell splash landing amongst the trenches. But here, in the middle, there was nothing but an eerie peace upon the slaughter field. Miller listened. His breathing, he realised, was the loudest sound in the shell hole. More thuds from the artillery pieces and ripples passed from one end of the ragged pond to another, gentle waves upon a tiny sea.

Gradually the seeping cold settled through his clothes and the stench he knew so intimately began to cloy with a renewed vigour. He gagged.

Wait it out Miller, me lad. The sun’s barely up and the mists aren’t going anywhere are they now?

He shivered.

The water gave a small splash. Probably just a jagged rock falling in.

Miller pushed himself further up, away from the greasy black mirror. He pressed on small sharp stones, the skin on his hand hot with sour pain as a sheared edge of rock sliced his palm. He shook his wrist and wiped the wound on his filth-smeared coat, the blood scarlet and bright and as thick as a runny yolk.

The Hun will fix me up. ‘Course they will, ‘specially after I draw ‘em maps and the like.

Movement across the shell hole caught his eye. He squinted through the mist – a distance of only ten yards or so – but saw nothing.

Another rock tumbled onto the surface.

He watched, expecting Blake to be standing on the opposite ledge, pointing a Lee Enfield service rifle and shooting poor old Miller like a rat.

But Blake did not appear.

Instead his eyes were on a stone as it moved free; a rupture in the clay soil, a shiver, then it was loose and softly tumbling down to the same hidden fate.

An explosion, thirty yards behind. A shell muted by the slop kicking the remains of the recent dead high into the air, raining once-treasured flesh into Miller’s hiding hole.

He shielded his head and neck, then glanced up with one eye.

There’s a larger rock now, moving itself free. Must be the vibrations.

This one moving still, black and wet, coming slack, awakening, sliding and rolling. And then a limb, an arm, flopping over the rock, a shoulder, and then – oh Christ look at that – this next rock coming with it looking like a head in a Hun helmet, the teeth chattering in the lipless mouth.

Miller’s breath strained in his throat as the corpse peeled itself away from the sodden earth, an arm half raised as it fell and rolled towards the water. It came free at the waist; no legs to be seen but only the long ragged tails of a unform coat slithering, slapping and slurping behind.

The face, a skinless, eyeless putrefying ball of meat twisted against the shoulder as it fell, closer, closer until gradually the creature stopped at the flooded edge, half melted into the fathomless brown water.

Just the vibrations. Must be. Just the movement in the earth. ‘Course it was. A trick of the earth. Just a trick.

But Miller noticed he was at the crater’s lip, his head above the protection it offered. His hand was shaking, his temples oddly cold like they had been wrapped in iced bandages.

Time to move on I reckon.

Miller peered towards the German lines. Still the guns were thumping but no rifles were firing. He took his rag in his hand, ready to wave. Then, on two feet and half-standing on the ledge, the liminal border marking the world of the living, he stopped.

Singing.

He turned and looked back into the crater.

The water thumped with far-distant artillery strikes.

I know that voice.

That song.

I know it.

It was coming from the pool, he could see the ripples change with the notes. The film of grease and oil on the surface becoming taut and loose with the pitch.

It was her.

The wench.

Singing at me are ya? Fuck off!

He threw a rock into the water and the voice softened to silence.

Whistling.

High in the air. Shells approaching.

Up ahead cannisters landed with a popping sound. A hiss and then more cylinders struck.

Pop pop pop.

Miller crouched and watched. The mists were moving now. Sweeping towards him like curtains, sweeping over and through him, and with them the scent of horseradish, mild at first, then stronger, the mists turning yellow as they got closer.

Gas.

An itch at the back of the throat. Then a cough. Eyes beginning to sting.

I need water.

Miller dropped back into the crater, plunging his rag into the pool and wrapping it about his mouth.

Not so bad. Not so bad. Maybe it’ll pass over.

He rubbed his eyes as the tears began to well up, blurring his vision. All was quiet, then the shouts of gas gas gas from his own lines, the sound of pans clanging together. He imagined the soldiers pulling their goggle-eyed masks on, helmets over the top and standing to on the firing steps, waiting for the Hun to follow the poison clouds.

He closed his eyes to the gas. He closed his eyes and lay back as the sound of a woman’s voice vibrated from the surface of the water once more.

He squinted through streaming vision and saw a pale white hand piercing the water. A woman’s hand, the fingers enticing forwards in a smooth wave. The song, slower now, hypnotic, easing the rasp that burned high in his chest. Come forwards, come into the cool waters. Come. Come.

Miller reached out, thigh-deep in the oily, stinking soup, willing his hand to make contact with his last scrap of hope, of escape, the song clear in his ear, rising in pitch, in volume, louder and louder. Nausea welled in his stomach and he backed away but saw his hand was in hers, glassy and cold.

“Got you, you bastard!”

Miller looked up to see a figure pointing a rifle at him. The man was masked, protected from the gas, but the wide shoulders and badge of rank signified it to be Blake. Miller glanced from the woman’s hand to the Regimental Sergeant Major, to the corpse with its missing legs and chattering teeth.

The hand pulled.

“Out!” shouted Blake.

It pulled again. Inescapable. The song rising in his ears.

“Last chance Miller!”

The bullet exited his chest. He looked down at his front, the curious sensation of warm and cold making him sigh.

You won’t have me, you bastards.

The waters closed around him as the hand pulled him into the darkness.