“Anyway, what regiment were you in?” enquired Ed, curiosity getting the better of him.
“Berkshires, Royal Berkshires. More like Berks if you ask me, sent off to die like letters being dumped out of a postman’s sack.”
“You were in the Berkshires? My grandfather was in that regiment. That’s quite some coincidence. Were you at the battle of Passchendaele?”
“I was in so many ass end battles. They didn’t have names for us though. Just another fucking nasty situation to endure. Over the top, advance, kill, die or return back to do it all again. It all became a blur. All that ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ ‘bang’ fucking ‘bang’. My mind was blotting the whole thing out. I remember that name though, Passchendaele. I am sure I was in that area at some point. There weren’t exactly lots of road signs, just burnt tree stubs, stripped of life and hope, stranded there erect in a quagmire of mud, blood, bones, metal shards, rats and a stench that soaked right through your clothes, even penetrating the thick leather of your boots into your socks and all over your mouldering, blistered feet.”
“I’ve read about it. It really does sound like hell. My grandfather was there. He talked about it before he died. He fought in the battle of the Somme in 1916 and then at Passchendaele the following year - you might have known him,” enquired Ed excitedly.
“I didn’t really know anyone there. It suited you better to not know anyone. I watched people and noticed them but I never got to know them. The pain would be too much because they would always be taken away, usually right in front of your eyes and in the most barbaric way possible. Having a friend was your own worst enemy, it drove people mad. It wasn’t for me. When I was first at the front, I was palled up with a kid who I went through training with. Eddie Stoner. On the first day we were ducking and diving with panic every time there was a bang, pop or squeak. Everyone was laughing at us. It was horrible. Strange to think that it was normal to ignore bombs dropping yards away . That was the crazy situation we were in. For fuck’s sake, I went from being a kid terrified of the dark with a night light in my room, to an adult who was expected to stand up to machine guns and shrapnel with no fear. Totally mad stuff! Anyway, Eddie was there one morning, sitting down. It was all quiet and so he got up to pass me his ration tin and some bits of bully beef he didn’t want. When he got halfway towards me there was a metallic ping noise and he stopped in his tracks. His eyes were focused on me, that little food tin in his hand. He just stared and stood motionless as if time stood still. Then I saw a little bit of blood drip out from under the rim of his helmet, first a trickle and then a steady flow, down over his eye brows, into his eyes, over his nose and mouth and down onto his chin and over his jacket. His eyes were focused hard on me as if he was trying to say his last will and testament right there. He collapsed, the ration tin fell onto the muddy wooden slats of the trench face up and he crumbled into a bent heap still partially upright against the trench wall. He was dead in a second. I leapt up and grabbed him and hugged him and hugged him. We both fell on the floor and I sobbed and sobbed. I had no idea how to deal with the situation. It was completely devastating. I was hollowed out right then and there. It felt like my innards and stomach had been scooped out onto a small shovel and tossed to the floor to be trodden into the mud. From that day on I would never have another friend, ever. It was too much.”
“Man, that’s terrible. Was it a sniper?” enquired Ed.
“No. What the Germans did for a while was drop heavy pointed bolts from planes over our lines. Basically there was no warning and if you were hit by one that was generally that. Normally people were not killed straight away. It might enter through your shoulder and exit from your stomach or whatever, causing an agonising death over days or weeks with infection. Eddie was lucky, it went through his helmet, down through his neck, right through his body. Unbelievable! I became a man that day. How I wish I never had. No more innocence or hope. Everything from then onwards was survival. Nothing more and nothing less,” said Donald, his words tearing into the description of events like metal tore into innocent flesh and bone.
“Christ, I don’t think I would even survive that,” commented Ed, reflecting with surprise at how quickly he had adapted from being a violent killer hound to chatting with a nineteen year old WW1 veteran. By now they had proceeded out of sight of the original entrance and some way into the tunnel system.
“Mate, that was just the beginning. That was nothing. Believe me. With all that blood and guts I’m sure war did a lot more for vegetarianism than any vegan activist. There was something utterly terrifying about every moment and always a new grizzly bloodied sight to greet you around every corner. My first job was laying barbed wire fences in no-mans land in the depth of night. It was something else, crawling into a pitch black hornet’s nest of potentially vicious machine gun fire. Three or four of us would slither out into the night, down into pot holes and craters, over decaying dead bodies, through mud and slime being as silent as possible. Then we would twist those metal cork screw posts into the ground and begin joining them all up with our bundles of barbed wire. It was crap in comparison to the Germans. Their barbed wire was so much thicker and nastier. I should know, I got caught on it a couple of times. If you were lucky you would get back to your trenches without being spotted by the enemy but if not, a long night of ducking into bomb holes to avoid the machine guns was on the cards. They used to call us the rabbits; always running helplessly from a gun. Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with all this”