My great-grandfather was taken prisoner during the war and spent the remainder in German custody - his wife receiving only a Missing In Action notification and not knowing if her husband of 2 weeks was ever coming back to her.
This, along with GCSE studies of the war poets inspired this short story.
P.O.W
ER
There
is only one type of silence in war – the silence of death.
I
ordered a halt to the bombardment and the massive guns fell silent. There was
an air of suppressed tension in No Man’s Land as we waited for the dust to
settle. The big push had made little difference. We still stood in the same
sodden ditch. The echo of mortar fire resounding in our ears. Almost, but never
completely, blocking out the moaning and cries of pain. The survivors were
being tended to – patched up and shoved back out again. Cautiously, I raised my
head above the parapet. The dust still hadn’t cleared on the Germans side but
we were able to see the bodies. Some were mere corpses but some emitted sound.
We were then ordered over the top ourselves to salvage what we could from No
Man’s Land. Ours not to reason why… I secured my helmet, checked I had my cosh
and went up and over.
I
came across a young man whose mud-splattered uniform gave no clue as to whether
he was English or German. One of his boots had fallen off, revealing a terrible
case of trench foot. It made me gag. My eyes travelled slowly up his body to
his face and I had to swallow hard to resist the urge to vomit. Half his face
was missing. The right side of his face was just a bloody pulp with shards of
bone sticking out. The left side was in perfect condition with his left eye
wide open, staring death in the face. I bent down and scraped some of the mud
off his jacket. Field grey. He was a Hun. The odd bullet zoomed past me. The
Germans were regaining sight. We were running out of time. I left the German
and moved quickly onward.
I
then found a young Tommy. His left leg had gone and he had a nasty gash in his
side – but he was alive. He called out to me and I waded across the thickening
mud to reach him. He grabbed my sleeve and almost pulled me down into the
sludge beside him. I regained my balance and told him to hook his arm around my
shoulder. He did this and I began to attempt to pull him up out of the thick
ooze that clung to his body.
He
suddenly grabbed my shoulder, causing me to fall forward. At the same time, a
bullet came whistling through the air, scraping the top of my helmet as it flew
past. That was too close for comfort. I took another firm grip of the soldier
and yanked him out of the mud. I heard the sound of a gun firing and felt a
sharp pain as the bullet thudded into my leg. I tried desperately to ignore the
pain and concentrated on rescuing the soldier. I was then hit in the arm by
another bullet and couldn’t stop myself from yelling out. I fell backwards into
the mud, letting go of the soldier, who landed face first in the gunge. I
vaguely heard someone yell “The NCO’s been hit!” before the shock and the pain
became too much for me and I blacked out, not knowing whether I would ever
regain consciousness or not.
As
it happens I did, but not in the front line. I opened my eyes to find myself
flat on my back on a moth-eaten old mattress. I was in a small, dingy room.
There was only one window, high up in the wall, which was obscured by thick metal
bars. I was a prisoner. Standing over me was another young soldier of about my
age. He had a nasty wound on his forehead, which was wrapped in bandages. He
asked me if I was all right. I said I was but my head hurt badly when I spoke.
I tried to sit up and the pain immediately intensified. I looked down at
myself. My arm was tied up in a makeshift sling made of old bed sheets. My leg
was also tightly bound in bandages that showed a deep red bloodstain. The
injured soldier introduced himself as Benjamin Owen and told me to lie down and
get some rest. I obeyed.
As
I lay there, staring up at the stone ceiling, my mind drifted to the soldier of
No Man’s Land and my heart sank as I realised he must have died. I then thought
of my wife back in England and wondered what this would mean for her. Little
did I know that it would be two long months before anybody back in England
would know of my predicament and even longer before I would be able to
experience the outside world.
(In case you're wondering, my great-grandfather survived the war, returned home to his wife and they had 8 children together. He died in 1951 at the age of 65.)
