Numbness

The quiet was jarring.

After so many hours of gunfire and explosions, it takes some time to adjust to the quiet again. I looked to my right and saw the young man who had only recently joined our regiment. His freckles were still visible through the mud, and his red hair was just beginning to poke out from under his helmet. 

He looked too young to shave. By my assessment, he had the face of a child and yet he was sent overseas to fight like a man; whatever that’s supposed to mean.

He’s stopped now, but he was crying. In the aftermath of the battle, the realization of war had really taken hold of him as he reckoned with the notion that he very nearly died on this field and that at some date in the near future, maybe tomorrow, he might still no lose his life in this war.

I bet when he walked down the front steps of his home to leave for basic training, the thought of not ever again walking up those same steps never crossed his mind. We enlisted as heroes, you see. I’ve been in his shoes; I’ve felt his pain and I’ve cried the same tears. I was new to battle at one point, too.

They don’t ever talk about how many of us are just young boys who are shivering in a trench, terrified and given to open sobbing but sometimes you just have to stand up for what’s right and we are standing - for freedom and people like us. Our presidents and prime ministers probably think we are fighting for them, but I’m not. Those grown men sent teenagers to do their dirty work and clean up the mess they’ve left in the world.

He’s buried his head into his hands now as he softly cries again. I want to tell him that no matter how tightly he closes his eyes, he won’t ever stop seeing what he saw today. We won’t ever look away from what we've seen, what we’ve done and what we’ve become. The nightmares haunt this place and they will continue to haunt our minds.

“You’re doing all right, lad,” Sergeant O’Flynn says as he walks by the young man. He pats the boy firmly on the shoulder for reassurance. It’s all he can give him, but it matters, and it means something to be seen. You still want to feel human after all of this and that pat on the shoulder reminds him that he is that.

The boy just nods - and he keeps nodding like he is replaying the reassurance over and over in his mind. Maybe he’s trying to find focus. Maybe he knows the Sergeant is lying because no matter your rank, none of us knows if we will survive this war. Or maybe he’s still young and naive enough that he’s trying to convince himself the Sergeant knows what he’s talking about. He no longer checks on me. He knows his words are wasted.

“He’s right, you know,” I tell the boy without looking away from the Sergeant. “You are doing all right. It doesn’t feel like it, but you are going to be fine.”

I hear him sniffle as he wipes his nose with the sleeve of his jacket and slowly continues to nod his head. I guess I will take his nodding as a silent agreement between him and I. I see him quietly talking to himself, or maybe he’s praying. I can’t hear him from where is sit and I’ll not intrude on whatever peace he can find in this hell hole.

He knows what to expect now and what will be expected of him. I’m watching the beginnings of a boy becoming a man. I’m proud of him in a way. He remains silent, but I know he’s heard us, me and the Sergeant. What else is there to say anyway?

“I remember my first week,” I tell him after a few minutes because I want to break the uncomfortable silence, “Remember the posters? Telling us the fight was for King and Country - sounded good, right? I tell you one thing for sure, you never see the bloody Kings down here in the mud, do ya?”

His head drops into the cradle of his hands. It’s so much to take in so I guess he’s overwhelmed. You can’t really imagine the sights and smells of war until you experience it. You’ve never experienced anything like the smell of men dying around you. The screams and the pleading, and the deadly silence that follows. There’s nothing that prepares you for that.

You’ve also never felt the cold and wet like you do on a battlefield. I look down at my feet in the puddle below me and I don’t even feel them anymore. I should probably be concerned about that with the possibility of trench foot, but I don’t have the energy. The puddle will be gone soon enough. The sun finally came out again.

“B’y, we’re a long way from Newfoundland, hey?” I speak again as I look to him for agreement and wait for a response. He says nothing. That’s all right, it’s hard to talk at the end of day like this. I’d only met him the night before when we’d all shared a drink. We knew the morning would bring the inferno, but last night, we were all just young men away from home.  

This morning seems like a lifetime ago. We started bright and early at 7:30, moving across that damned field. In broad daylight. Can you imagine? Broad daylight! The sun danced off the metal buttons of our uniforms like they were lit targets. The sun was the very reason they picked today. That irony is not lost on me that we would have been better off in the rain.

I look up to the sky as if the blue sky and fluffy white clouds could give me answers for what happened. We lost so many on the field today, but there are no answers to be found for that.  I hear some of the other men talking around me. They are saying this might be the bloodiest day of the war our side has had so far. I hate that they used the term ‘so far’.

I look back at my new trench mate and then cast my gaze down the length of the trench. They are starting to collect the bodies now so pretty soon they will have a real count. I see my friend Murphy about ten feet away from me. He didn’t make it. They will come get him soon, I expect.

Murph has been with me since the first and we even left home and shipped off together. He’s got a wife and two youngsters at home. He talked about them all the time. The older one was named after him and he used to joke that he was expected to be a handful as he grows up “just like his father”, Murphy would say it with such pride. He was one of the ones who liked to talk, while others had nothing to say.

One of the other men, we called him Shave, never talked about his family. He said talking about his family in a shithole like this was like swearing in church. Come to think of it, I don’t even think I know Shave’s real name. We called him Shave because he was meticulous about shaving.

“No need to go to our deaths looking unkempt, fellas” Shave would say. He was now lying beside Murphy having kept his promise.

I wondered who Shave left behind and it got me thinking about my mother. My mother is the finest person I’ve ever known. I know raising me by herself wasn’t easy after my Da died, and we didn’t have much more than each other, but she never once complained. I think about her a lot now.

“My mother is a great cook,” I tell the kid, “That woman could cook for kings and queens if she wanted. Oh I miss the taste of her Sunday dinner. I’d give anything to hug her again.”

“When I left home, mother said ‘William, I loves ya’, I’m going to miss you and I’m so proud of you.’ Then she told me to be brave and to remember who I was. I think she knew this would change me like it changed all of us. She gave me a kiss on my cheek and then I was off for training, then off to Gallipoli and for the life of me I don’t know how the Christ we ended up here,” I said to him and laughed. It’s anything but funny, I know, but it’s an odd truth how sometimes the ridiculous just makes you laugh.

He’s crossed his arms in front of him now and is clutching his jacket in each hand as if he’s trying to hug himself. He doesn’t want to talk. That’s ok. There’s been many times I didn’t want to talk either. It’s hard to say anything after what just happened. It was all over in less than half an hour. We came out of a trench we called St. John’s Road and were stepping over the bodies still on the ground from the day before as we headed out into battle.

“Get past the Danger Tree”, they told us. That tree was just standing there in the middle of a battlefield like some surreal soldier. Marking the spot where most of us would die. It just kept standing there like it was bearing witness to the horror.

A beaten up tree in the field was our marker - they called it the Danger Tree. They weren’t kidding with words spoken like a promise that we could actually get past danger over here. We tucked in our chins and walked straight into the gunfire like it was just another storm courtesy of the Atlantic. I looked down the trench and tried to count how many of us lived.  Not many. I stop counting.

I notice that he’s stopped crying now. There’s always an end to tears. I think your body just runs out of them at some point. Mine has. I can’t remember the feeling of the moisture trailing down my cheek.

“It’s Saturday so Mother will be at the shops today and at church tomorrow praying for all of us over here. They all will be praying back home, I expect,” I tell him. It makes me feel good to think about it.

With everything inside me I swear I can feel them sometimes, you know, the prayers. I’d swear on my mother’s life that I can feel her love reach across the ocean to comfort me from time to time. I hope she feels mine. I want to see her again and feel her embrace. I want a life past this trench. I want that for him, too. He’s just staring at the reinforced wall of the trench now, his eyes are swollen and red and look like they are locked in a gaze. I wonder about what he’s thinking. Then again, I don’t care to know. We are entitled to our thoughts, if nothing else.  They use our bodies and sometimes take our lives, but our thoughts are ours and he owes me no explanation.

I see two soldiers pick up Murphy and Shave and they gingerly carry away both men. I feel the sting of losing my friends and I pray for their souls and all the others who perished on this field today. Someone out there will have the terrible task of going to their houses to tell their families the awful news about how these brave men died in battle. I’d hate to be the one to do that.

Two more soldiers walk towards me and the young man. The tall one has red hair and freckles all over his face, just like the kid. The other one had blue eyes that are so light in colour, they almost glow. They are looking right at me, and I wonder if they are going to ask me to help collect the bodies. I don’t want to. If they ask, I will refuse.

“I’ve had enough death today,” I think to myself.  

“Here’s another,” the tall red headed one says as he reaches for my arms. As he moves me, I see the extent of  what I have suffered. How could anyone have survived such injuries?

“Oh God bless him,” Blue Eyes says as he looks down at the young man who has started to cry again. Blue Eyes looks like a concerned father as he looks down at the young man with a sad look on his face.

“I’m sorry, son. Did you know him well?” Blue Eyes says to the boy.

Wait, is he talking about me?

“I only met him last night,” he responds, “he said his name was William. William O’Reilly.”

My name is still in the air as I feel them take me. I want to resist, but I can’t feel anything anymore. The redhead takes a hold of me under the shoulders and Blue Eyes grabs my feet. As they carry me past the young man, he looks up briefly and I see the tears in his eyes as he looks right through me.

I am mist, I realize. I am nothing but mist.